Spiderfly
by Jynx'sbox
Summary: Sequel to NFM. All roads eventually lead back to where we started, if they are followed long enough. An end never written and a beginning forgotten. 'What ever you do to me don't act like I'm nothing, because I'm not going anywhere.' Actual Epilogue added
1. Razor Teeth

'Will you walk into my parlor?'

Spiderfly

Chapter One

It had never been his intention to tell Reverend Meat that he was leaving. He had though, Johnny mentioned it in an off-hand comment about something or other before he could stop himself. Little thoughts about important things tended to crawl out of his mouth and slide off of his tongue. If he thought about it hard enough he could probably figure out why.

"I'm going away for awhile."

_May I inquire as to where?_

"No, you may not." biting words edged in thorns. They ripped up his throat as he spoke them.

He'd already said goodbye to Squee, and looking up from his front door he could see all the lights in his little friend's house were off and the window he'd crawled down from only moments ago was still open.

Perhaps if he paid enough attention he would have realized that deep down Reverend knew more about certain things than he let on. Johnny had no intention of coming back despite what he told Squee. One last attempt at doing something for someone else, for someone who mattered. For someone who had a chance.

_I'll be here when you get back._

Speaking of discomforting goodbyes.

Reverend didn't say anything else, the smile on his cheap plastic mouth spoke enough. The look on Nny's face suggested he might know this if he really admitted it to himself. All roads eventually lead you back the way you came if you follow them long enough.

The door slammed shut behind him. The sound was unnaturally loud and the air around his house disturbingly quiet. He looked up and down the street once before walking to his car. As he opened the door he caught sight of the look out point just outside of the city. Johnny paused and considered stopping there on his way out of town. It was already dark and the moon was high, it would be a good night to look out on the town before he left.

"It wouldn't take too long." A light coming down the road distracted him. A car drove by slowly and eventually pulled to a stop right in front of his house. A head could be seen sticking out of the passenger side window and a hand stuck out to wave at him from inside.

"Hey mister!" The passenger called out, "Do you know how we can get to Perkins Street from here?" An urge made Johnny's right hand twitch. Very slowly he shook his head no and climbed into his own car, not trusting himself to speak. He wanted to, oh how he wanted to give into that urge but testing was needed. Was he really free, or was Reverend right?

_NO SUCH THING!_

_NO SUCH THING!_

"Dickhead!"

Johnny sighed and rested his forehead against the steering wheel, being free didn't mean he had to allow abuse like that. A tiny smile followed by a happy giggle and he peeled out of the driveway, turned and slammed forward into the back of the other car. He kept going until the other car was stretched across the width of the road.

"OH Shit!"

"This fucker's bat-shit crazy, dude!"

"Go! Just Go!"

But his car slammed into the passenger side before they could right their car. Dickhead was crushed and the driver's head slammed through the left-side window. Thank goodness for old cars. Nny's was an older model and much sturdier than the expensive fiberglass one the other boys had been driving in. So other than a broken headlight and smashed grill there was no damage he could pinpoint when he got out to see what he'd done.

Love is a burning thing

and it makes a fiery ring

Someone had phoned the police and he waved at them as they drove past, their lights blinking.

bound by wild desire

I fell into a ring of fire

Blood leaking from the driver's head, glass sticking out at odd angles, blond hair dripping red. His eyes were blue and his name was Steve. Dickhead's right shoulder was in his mouth, teeth ripping his own skin, his right knee had shattered his left one on impact. The police found no identification on him but later, a friend of Steve's told the police his name was Terry.

I fell into a burning ring of fire

What place would there be for him, then? Where would he go when all was said and done? Heaven wasn't an option and from what Senior Diablo said neither was Hell.

I went down down down

and the flames went higher

and it burns burns burns

the ring of fire

Maybe he would just disappear, vanish like smoke, or maybe he would just keep being brought back.

the ring of fire

Or maybe he should just stop thinking about it and take it for what it is, some idiot's fucking-funny idea of a really old joke.

More police cars flashed by, none noticing the front of his car or the tiny splatters of red on his windshield from 'Dickhead' Terry's teeth tearing through his own flesh.

The taste of love is sweet

when hearts like ours meet

I fell for you like a child

Oh, but the fire went wild

I fell into a burning ring of fire

I went down down down

and the flames went higher

and it burns burns burns

the ring of fire

the ring of fire

The look out point was empty when he pulled up, almost hitting the 'no parking' sign as he did. He grabbed his die-ary and wrote what he almost thought, wanted to believe, would not be his last entry.

_. . . and admire. To feel contempt . . . is a vulgar thing. Too often . . . admirable compulsions . . . that I can do without – desires and urges . . . I hope to be cold . . ._

_So very, very cold . . ._

"If I leave it behind, it will be." Getting out of the car, Johnny noticed that the temperature was dropping the further he got out of town.

And it burns burns burns

the ring of fire

the ring of fire

It really was very quiet, inside of his own head now. Quiet and maybe, if he was lucky, empty of all other things besides himself. Reverend's voice still twittered in his memories.

_NO SUCH THING!_

_NO SUCH THING!_

He sat on the hood of his car for as long as he could allow himself to. The air around him was frigid and he wondered, if he sat out here long enough, would he freeze? No, it wasn't even cold enough to see his breath, he wouldn't turn blue from it. Nny shook his head. Maybe this vacation would do him some good after all. Maybe when he came back . . . No, he would not. If he had any choice in the matter he would stay gone.

Johnny got back in his car.

_Everyone is a slave to something._

'I am free now.'

"I am free now." and just saying the words left a bitter taste in his mouth, the taste of something rehearsed too often for a moment like this only to find the freedom lacked many of the ideals it had promised. Free from what, exactly?

Johnny remembered, and hated himself for what he could and couldn't dredge up from the 'freed' confines of his head. So many questions, what price had he paid to be the way he was?

His arms moved without his provocation to start the car and he forced them to stop. Looking at them now he could see scars littered across the skin tightly stretched over his hands. The white and pale yellow marks weren't amazingly interesting at first glance but he could, if he tried hard enough, remember where some of the bigger expansions of scar-tissue came from.

The old engine roared to life and Johnny pulled out and started down the well worn dirt road down to the main highway and into the city. He passed shop after shop, cafe after cafe, until finally the last gas station was a speck of light in his rear view mirror.

_How lovely would it be to escape from these emotions . . . incapable of ridding myself of their . . ._

X

"_I want you to pay close attention, Todd. Do you see this jar?" There is silence from the small boy sitting in the chair, "Do you? I need some sign you understand what I'm talking about." Todd looks up from his knees and those soulful brown eyes can still startle the good doctor, no matter how many times he sees them._

"_This jar Todd, I want you to look at it and concentrate." They look away from him and he can breathe again. Sometimes he forgets to. "All of that hurt you feel, all of those bad memories, Todd, I want you to put them in this jar." Dr. Manning places the jar on the table between them, it is empty._

"_Tell me Todd, are they inside?" Todd looks up at him again and nods. Dr. Manning smiles gently at him._

"_Alright, that's good. Now I want you to tell me this, Todd. What do they look like?" Todd looks at the jar again, his big eyes squinting at the glass. He leans forward, sitting at the edge of his seat. The good doctor waits patiently._

"_What do you see, Todd?" He looks away from the jar, to the ground and then looks up at Dr. Manning. He says nothing._

"_What do you see, Todd?"_

"_What do you see?"_

X

End Chapter One

A/N: Sorry this took months longer than it should have. I ended up rewriting this and chapters two and three after rereading my previous stories and the two comics. Not much changed, just little insignificant things.

Song: 'Ring of Fire' by Johnny Cash.

Please review, I still need to know if people are interested in this continuing on to the end.


	2. I am the First

"If you can hear me, even though I scream . . ."

Thank you to the ten people who reviewed. It is much appreciated. Please tell me if this new chapter has any grammar or spelling mistakes. I usually miss them until they are updated and I know it turns people away when they think an author can't follow proper grammar rules.

Warnings: Language and gore. Lots of cursing.

Spiderfly

Chapter Two

_I am the first_

"_Where are we going?"_

"_Just pack your things, we're leaving tomorrow."_

"_Why?"_

"_Because that fucking doctor said it's not healthy for him to be here with us." Mr. Casil stumbled almost blindly towards the closet of their tiny bedroom and jerked the doors open._

"_It's all your fault, you and your disgusting habits. I don't need Social Services knocking down my door so get your shit and get ready to go." He started tearing through their belongings, digging for something hidden beneath his wife's mess of dirty laundry._

"_What are you looking for?"_

"_Here's your bag, fill it with your fucking pills if you feel the need!" He thrust his hand and the bag's strap in his wife's face. "Take it."_

"_I won't touch the thing until you tell me where the hell we're going." Mr. Casil stared at his wife, she was slouched on the end of the bed just staring at his shoes. Her own slippers were haphazardly large and a dirty pink color. Mrs. Casil was a mess of uncombed hair and unclean sleeping clothes._

"_Just a few towns away, not far. I promise it's not far." And with that he left their tiny bedroom._

X

The road opened out to the end of the universe, or so it would seem. He had driven far enough to run out of gas and it didn't look like there would another gas station for miles. Parked on the side of a desolate highway for hours now, Johnny thought it might be impossible for anyone to make a journey on this highway, even with a tank full of gasoline. Perhaps that's why he hadn't seen a single car since the last turn off, other people knew this was a road to nowhere.

He sat in the driver's seat of his car with his knees pulled up to his chest and watched as nobody drove past him, watched as no birds flew by and the sun sat undisturbed somewhere to his left. Its light hit his arm and half of his body felt infuriatingly warm.

The black bag he'd brought with him was sitting in the passenger seat along with a light backpack he'd gotten from a drunken teenager who'd tried to egg his house a few weeks ago. Johnny hoped the guy had learned a lesson about respecting other people's property, especially after have a dozen eggs forcibly rammed down his esophagus. If he hadn't learned something then Nny supposed he'd just have to be satisfied with knowing the guy had suffocated to death.

To be honest it was a small comfort.

As the sun began to sink closer and closer to the skyline Nny continued to watch as nothing and no one passed by. Wouldn't it be interesting if he were to die in a place like this, where no one would see him. As if they'd see him anyways.

Some people would he guessed, if they were there.

Letting go of the steering wheel and Nny wrapped his arms around his legs pulling them closer to his chest. He stared at a spot on the floorboard of his car, a dark splotch he couldn't remember being there before.

It was very round and dark, even with the light still streaming in through the window he didn't recognize what the substance was. Maybe really old blood or something. He couldn't remember killing someone in his car.

Maybe he'd gotten blood on his shoes? No, there would have been more of it, Johnny wracked his brain but it gave him no reply other than a twitch of anger. Why couldn't he remember what happened? One of his hands dropped from its position and reached out to touch it and felt . . . nothing. His fingers ran along the carpet he could see and then just dropped off into darkness. He couldn't see anything inside of the strange hole except that it was filled with something black, something he couldn't touch or feel.

After a few moments of silence, Nny sitting absolutely still, watched as a horribly familiar something slithered up his arm, coiling him in a tight grip. More somethings came out of the void and touched him, wrapping around his legs and waist, some parts of it were sharp and those parts scraped his skin and pulled through his clothes. Thick red blood ran in rivers down his arms and legs but he didn't move, when it broke his body into smaller pieces he didn't scream and when it pulled him down he didn't care.

X

"I wonder whose car that is."

"It's not a car, honey, it's a truck."

"That is not a truck, dude."

"Shut the fuck up, Harpson. I can't drive with you yelling in my ear."

"Maybe we should pull over, see if anyone needs help."

"Can't waste the gas, honey."

"We've got plenty of gas, Luke. Just pull over so I can check."

"I'll show you gas."

"Oh God, Lee if you do it I swear to God and the Devil alike that I'll never forgive you."

"Let's just check to make sure someone's not in the car."

"Good LORD, Lee! Pull over, Luke. He cracked one."

"What the fuck did you break, Lee-you fucking idiot?"

"I broke wind, my red-neck asshole-friend."

"Pull over before I vomit."

"Alright, alright." A big, silver SUV pulled off of the road just in front of Johnny's car. A girl jumped out of the right side sliding door while a short Asian boy leaned out behind her. All of the windows simultaneously dropped down with a dull whine.

"You are a sick, sick man, Lee."

"I told you not to stop at that seafood restaurant." Lee sauntered away from the door in soft black jeans and a green polo shirt. Another girl, with orangy-red hair while the first girl had soft and short blond spikes, pulled back a fist and pretended to take aim in a boxer's stance. Lee did an over exaggerated martial arts move as the only other boy besides Lee and Luke stumbled out of the SUV.

"See anyone, Trix?"

"I don't think anyone's in here." She called back. It was too dark to tell, really. The sun had already set but she peered through the window anyways, looking for any sign that someone was inside.

"I'll bet they already hitched a ride in town. They wouldn't just be sitting in there." He pulled her back to the van.

"Hey Matt, help me out!" Lee had the red head in a choke hold and she was struggling violently. "I can't hold her much longer."

"Hell no, you're on your own." Trix watched as her friend Heather shoved Lee off of her and tackled him to the ground.

"Get back in the car, you idiots." They piled back in, one after another and then slid the door shut. Luke slammed his own door and they started on the road again. Ten minutes later Lee had managed to dig through their suitcases down to the cooler and pulled up a few drinks.

"What the fuck are you lightweights doing with with my beer?" Luke stared at them through the rear view mirror, glancing periodically at the road. Trix was sitting in the passenger seat just looking at the rest of them with a smile on her face. When she looked at the road she couldn't believe what she saw.

"Luke, pull over!"

"Wha-?"

"Just stop the car!" and he did, in his panic he swerved off of the road, almost right into someone walking in the opposite direction.

"Holy shit, who the hell is that?" Everyone turned to look out the front windshield at the man they had almost bludgeoned to death with the front of their SUV.

Johnny couldn't see through the headlights. But he could hear what the people in the van were saying, and screaming.

"You fucking idiot you almost made me hit him!"

"Yo, Luke calm down."

"I bet he's the guy from the car!"

"Trix, don't feel so happy about it. You don't even know the guy. He could be crazy or something."

"You watch too many horror movies Heather. He needs a ride back to his car."

"If he can make it to the gas station he can make it the five minutes back to his car."

"It wasn't five minutes, Matt. It took like twenty to get here and he's carrying gas tanks, we can't let him walk."

"Could you get out of my fucking way!" Trix snapped her attention back to the thin man in the headlights to see that no one was there. Just then a face appeared in her window and she shrieked. Luke yelled something but the guy cut him off.

"What the fuck is your problem? You nearly ran me over!" He aimed a kick at the door and it landed with a sharp twang when his metal tipped boots scraped the side. He then continued down the road lugging a red plastic gas can in each hand.

"Fucking assholes can't drive for shit mother-fucking, pig-shitting, twat-burning dick-faced . . . ."

"Oh my God," Trix jumped out of the car and ran after him. Luke tried to grab her but her jacket slipped between his fingers and she was gone down the street after him. "Wait!"

"Trix!" Heather was out the door after her in a heart beat and so was Luke, leaving Lee and Matt to gathering the items that had flown about the car when it had jolted to a stop.

_I am the first_

_A shadow at the end_

_of a hallway_

"Hold on!" She could see he wasn't going to stop for her.

"If I had brought the damn thing or my fucking bag . . ."

"Let us give you a ride back, we saw your car on the road. That whole thing was my fault, I am so sorry!" When she caught up with him she ran around to cut him off and held her hands up in surrender.

He gave her a look that made her feel uncomfortable. He seemed so mad, running after probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Trix maintained she was doing something nice for him.

"We just want to give you a ride back." He didn't seem much taller than herself and she wondered just how heavy those cans were.

"Trix, stop! Leave him alone." Heather called out again, but they were already walking back, Trix and the guy, who was eying her friend with disdain as she clumsily lugged one of the gas cans with both arms. She was smiling again. Luke ran up to her and took the can away.

"He's gonna let us give him a ride to his car." And Heather had been afraid of that. She didn't like the look of the guy, like he hadn't eaten in weeks. From what she could see his clothes weren't in the best of shape and his hair, or what was left of it, was cut in a demented manner. It was fucking creepy. He noticed her scrutiny and gave her a look she didn't like either.

Trix turned around once Luke had gone back to the SUV but Johnny had already passed her. Everyone was climbing in and Heather grabbed her arm.

"Come on, the sooner we get him back the sooner we can get to the next town." Once they were all packed neatly inside, their guest sitting closest to the sliding door, Luke pulled into the road and turned the car around. Lee was sitting in the very back, by the cooler and leaned forward to offer, Nny a drink.

"Thirsty?" Johnny looked at the can dangling so close to his face he could feel the coolness of it against his skin.

"I don't drink."

"Ever?"

"He means he doesn't drink alcohol." Heather was sitting on the other side of Matt, away from Johnny. She motioned to the can and Lee brought it back to himself and saw that it was in fact more beer.

"Sorry, man. How about a soda?"

Just at that moment Trix, who was sitting in the front passenger seat turned to look at Johnny.

"What's your name?" Heather reached out and flicked her friend's nose.

"Don't be rude!"

"I was just asking a question." Johnny diverted his attention out the window and Luke reached over to pull Trix down so she was facing the road.

"Put your seatbelt on." And she did. A few minutes later they pulled up, once again, in front of Johnny's car. He climbed out without a word, pulling both gas cans with him and Heather did her own climb over Matt to slam the door behind him. Trix rolled down her window and called out;

"Sorry for almost running you over!" before the window started back up again, nearly catching her hair in the process. Before they backed up Johnny gave her and Luke a crooked smile before nodding in her direction. Her brother couldn't have peeled out of there faster if their lugging, silver SUV had been a Cherry Red Lamborghini.

_I spin the Carousel_

_The laughter recedes away_

"That was weird." Lee intoned from the far back, "And you called us lightweights, Luke. That guy didn't drink at all!" Heather tried to laugh, Matt succeeded at it and high-fived his best friend. Trix smiled back at him then wrinkled her nose. The back seat smelled like gas from the tanks.

Twenty five minutes later they pulled into the first gas station they saw to get some food and gas themselves.

_My finger on your lips_

_I stole something precious_

X

"Do you realize how lucky you kids are?" The Deputy on duty handed Trix a blanket and she wrapped it around Heather and herself. The cameras had barely caught it, the cops told them. The boy, whoever he was, whatever he did, had been done in less than a minute.

_'Am I still happy?' I began_

_Lee opened the door and stepped inside, joking about how weird hitchhikers were. Heather was the first to stop, the blood a stark red against the yellow of the service counter. The clerk had been pulled so that a majority of what was left of them was spread out next to the register. The limbs still attached to the body dripped thickly and the one's not attached had been haphazardly dropped in the group's path. The air around Trix became heavy, only the muffled sound of her brother voice broke through. _

"_Trix!"_

_She watched the blood drip down from what once was the clerk's arm and neck. A pulpy mess beside the door might have been the head._

_Lee had run outside to hurl and Heather followed after him._

"_Trix, back up."_

_All at once noise crashed into her skull, Heather crying outside, Lee gaging, Matt yelling something at Luke. A radio somewhere behind the counter played fuzzy pieces of a song. _

_I know that_

_I'm still laughing_

_Aren't I?_

"_Oh Trix," Luke weakly murmured from beside her, "we need to get outside." Matt was behind her, his hand on her back. He and Luke both pulled her out of the doorway. Matt was already on his cell phone and she jerked away from him to stumble over to where Heather and Lee sat crouched in front of the store's wide window. _

_There was a rumbling and Johnny's car drove by, skirting the circle of light the store provided. If she'd been in her right of mind she might have heard him laugh over the raspy sound of his car shifting gears to drive away. Heather screamed again and Lee's nausea returned with a vengeance._

_Ten years ago your past self_

_prayed for your happiness_

_Ten minutes later the cop cars arrived._

"You should know better than to pick up strangers, you kids look old enough." No one said a word. Trix held a still shaking Heather and apologized over and over again.

"I'm so stupid, Heather, I'm so sorry." Her friend sobbed in her arms, "I'm so sorry, guys."

"Do any of you remember the license plate number? Anything about the car?"

"No sir, I didn't bother looking at the plate," Luke held his head in his hands and stared down between his knees, "I thought he drove a small truck but I'm not sure."

"It wasn't a truck, Luke."

"Fine, whatever." He looked up at the sheriff, "It was a smaller car than our own, whatever it was. It was old too, not much paint left on it."

"Do you remember what he looked like?"

"It was dark, sir. We could barely see him." The Deputy turned to Trix.

"Dark clothes," she closed her eyes trying to grasp the murky and fading image of him standing before her in the dark, "Not much taller than me." She stopped trying to think so hard and she could remember only the smell of something odd under the gasoline. The word metallic, came to mind. "He was really skinny. Not much hair, just these two . . ." she motioned with her hands, "string things of it, like horns. I think it was black or brown, God, this sounds so stupid." The Deputy shook his head and murmured something about satanic rituals to another officer.

"How old was he, do you think?"

"Maybe my age."

"No, baby girl, he looked younger than you." Matt pushed a strand of her own hair away from her face.

"I thought he was about your age, Luke." piped Lee from the far left, "He didn't look nearly that young." The Deputy sighed.

"You're all in shock. You can stay the night here and rest, we'll try again in the morning. Have any parents we should call?

"No. They're in Spain right now. We won't be able to get a hold of them till Saturday." Luke intoned from beside his sister. Heather had already called her mom, Lee his grandmother and Matt lived on his own. Luke moved to sit closer to Trix.

The Deputy took some notes down. He had an assailant; maybe 20, maybe 28 years old, dark clothes, brown/black hair(mostly bald), under 120 lbs, 5ft 5-8in tall. Automobile: unspecified (older, rusty model). It wouldn't be enough, he knew but he hoped they would give him more in the morning after the shock wore off. The Deputy handed the notes to another officer and turned back to the group unfortunate enough to find the crime scene.

"So far we don't have any reason to believe this man will come after you but just in case I think you kids should go home as soon as you can. In the morning, after you've had a rest and we've talked would be fine." Luke nodded as he pulled his sister into an awkward embrace.

"You didn't know, Trix." She leaned on him hard, her eyes stinging. An uncomfortable feeling had been growing inside of her, the fear was eating its way through the shock, wracking her body with spasms and tremors. What if he'd done something in the car? What if he had-!

Luke cut her thoughts short.

"You didn't know." He held her tightly, "None of us did."

X

End of Chapter two

A/N: Yep, that's it for this tiny segment. And sorry this took so long, I got caught up in college work and had to set this aside until I could properly edit it. If I missed something, please let me know.

These OC characters, by the way, probably won't be returning to the story.

The quote at the top is by Tsukiko Amano's "Butterfly" or "Chou", the main song is "Rain of Brass Petals (Three Voices Edit)" I will use this song again later.

The other song, as some of you will remember, is Letter from Lost Days, one of the main songs from Little Red Letter.

Please review for the next chapter


	3. Spiked Sponges

"_I think I kind of lost myself again."_

Spiderfly

Chapter 3

"_What do you see?"_

Road, highway, nothing but an empty street and empty towns.

"_I want you to look inside and find those horrible memories."_

I can't find anything.

"_Take all of that negativity and put it outside of yourself."_

It's a black hole, there is nothing to hold.

"_Put it somewhere you can see it and tell me . . ."_

But I don't-!

"_What do you see?"_

Aching, and empty. I can't see anything.

"_Can you hear me?"_

Yes.

"_I need some sign that you understand what I'm saying."_

I understand . . .

"_Look at me."_

Look at you? How-?"

"_I have a surprise for you."_

X

The world was so bleak outside of that dark and horrible place he'd crawled out of.

This town was no different. Everything seemed so normal and quiet. The streets were dirty, the buildings tilted slightly to the left, people shuffled by and avoided all eye contact.

Nobody looked at him and made scathing comments. Children were still children, running around like kids their age do but in a way he'd never seen before. None of them played together or taunted and teased. It was as if each one was in a world of their own.

It felt like he'd just stepped out of a carefully drawn hell hole and everything else had just been carelessly sketched in. Unfinished.

He pulled his car over and stepped out onto a very normal street in a very normal town, the sky here no different from the one back home. Johnny slammed the door shut and walked around to the sidewalk.

_I have a surprise for you._

A woman clutching her daughter's tiny hand muttered by, the little girl wandering beside her in a dazed state. He watched them go with an odd sense of detachment not quite sure what to think of this outer place.

_There is a point in every story_

_Where everything falls into the downward spiral_

_This point is the turning of the tide_

_And it is often only found by chance_

A homeless man slouched against a building stumbled up and towards him. Before the grimy Hobo could trip head first into a personal nightmare, he quickly lurched left and passed Johnny, wailing as he did so. He shook the small black bag, the one he used to collect change, in his hand with such intensity at a passing teenager that several pennies and dimes splashed out. The Hobo dropped to the ground, hissing at the very confused young girl as he scooped up his change and dumped it into the worn and hole-ridden pockets of his jacket.

He felt like the stranger he was, just watching and not understanding why.

Walking towards the convenience store he'd parked in front of, Johnny walked inside and headed towards the freezy machine near the counter.

"I told you, no candy today."

"But you said-!"

"Well, now I'm saying no." A woman and her child, a young boy about eight years old, walked out from one of the aisles. The mother of the boy had him by his upper arm and was pulling him towards the front counter, away from the sweets. Johnny, his empty freezy cup in hand turned when the boy started to scream.

"Let me go!"

"Don't do this here."

"You're hurting me!"

"I am not, now hush or I'll give you a real reason to cry." By this time he wasn't the only one watching. The girl behind the service counter was standing stiff and straight. The magazine propped open in her hands was slowly put down to rest on the glass counter.

_There is a point in every story_

_Where everyone falls into the downward spiral_

_This point is the ending of the story_

_And it is always found at the beginning_

The woman looked up, shoulder-length black hair was mockingly pressed and arranged, flawless on her head. Her eyes, flicked immediately to the counter girl then to a man who'd just walked in.

"What are you looking at?"

Silence

"Mind your own fucking business!" She threw her items, the very same magazine that was already on the counter and a plain writing notebook with a matching pen, on the counter so hard they fell behind it and hit the cashier's legs. The woman flipped a loose strand of hair behind her shoulder, finally noticing Johnny standing only a short ways to her right.

"Think you can just watch like that?" She tightened her grip on the boy, "It's no concern of yours." She dropped the angry snarl on her face as she looked at him. He matched her stare for stare until she glanced away, at the cashier girl who was still looking on in disbelief.

"Well?" The girl, looking very lost just shook her head, "Are you going to ring me up?"

"O-oh." She reached down and picked up the magazine and notebook, checking the woman out as quickly as she could. Johnny looked at the little boy, whose arm was still caught in the woman's grip. There were no other marks that he could see and the kid's head was down, as if in embarrassment or shame.

_What do you see?_

"What the fuck is your problem?"

_What do you see?_

The other man was still standing in the doorway, blocking the exit. The woman shoved by him, and down the street. Everything still inside of the store seemed frozen. The girl behind the counter still had her hand out, holding change that had already been taken. The man was at the door, his body propping it open. Johnny had the cup in his hand, empty, his eyes watching for someone he knew couldn't be there.

_I have a surprise for you._

The freezy cup hit the floor and the man felt a breeze as Johnny walked out without a word. The girl blinked and stared at her hand in confusion. The two people looked at each other and shuffled on again, barely aware of even the flow of time.

Outside, Johnny tailed the woman and her child not bothering to hide himself, he had the feeling that even if they turned and saw him nothing would happen. A few blocks down the woman stopped and gave the child the notebook and matching pen she'd bought. She stopped gripping his upper arm and moved to hold his hand firmly. He walked beside her with a badly disguised sense of unease.

She started talking to him. They were too far away to understand at first but as he moved closer and closer to the unsuspecting mother and child the woman's words became clearer and easier to hear.

". . . get there you need to be . . . have you acting up again, they'll take you away from us. We can't have that, okay? Stay on your best behavior and we'll get through this. Just remember what we told you and everything will be fine."

"How long will I be there this time?" The woman slowed to a stop.

"I'm not sure, baby, not long though. Not this week."

"Why do I have . . ." a truck rumbled by, drowning out what the boy said as they continued only a few feet ahead of Johnny, " . . . wants me to stay?"

"Your Father and I only want what's best for the whole family."

"Okay." The conversation ended as the mother and child rounded a corner. Johnny followed but as he turned the corner someone bumped roughly into Johnny's right side, effectively catching his attention.

"Sorry." The guy adjusted his glasses and smiled apologetically. "My mistake, I think I need to get my eyes checked again." He nodded at Nny and then continued on the way he'd been going.

A bubble of irritation gurgled at the back of his mind but he ignored it in favor of seeing if the angry woman was still in sight. He reached the corner, rounded it and barely caught them in the distance entering a building a short ways down the empty street.

"Damn!" He stalked down the street, unnerved by the pure silence of the part of the city she'd lead him to, and the sign hanging above the double glass doors of the place she'd dragged her son inside of.

"Happy Times . . ." He read aloud. In that moment, Reverend seemed to reach out from the past and grab him by the ear.

_You're always a slave to something._

" . . . Correctional Institution."

A small set of stairs lead up to the glass doors, another smaller sign was hung up. In big, blue letters it read;

"Child Care on a mental level, first time walk-ins welcome! Special appointments recommended for extreme cases."

He couldn't see the woman inside from where he was standing, in fact he didn't think he could see anyone behind the doors at all. He reached for the handle and touched . . . nothing. Looking down he saw that there were no handle bars, only smooth glass and metal. He remembered seeing the door swing open outwards, to let the woman inside. Stepping back, Nny looked at another sign, on the other plate glass door. This one, hanging from a single corner with crinkles and folds, was hand-written in green letters on blue paper.

"Walk-ins; See side entrance."

"Side-?"

He followed Happy Times back the way he'd came until he noticed a small alleyway leading to the dark spaces between the Correctional Institution and the nearby buildings. A plaque with bold Red Letters was hanging high up the wall beside the alley.

"Happy Times Side Entrance. Walk-ins Only!"

Beneath it a smaller sign read;

"Delivery Trucks visit back entrance located in the alleyway near the intersection of East and Fifth St."

X

_The end of the world is said_

_To have been planned from the start of it_

_This is the downward spiral_

_And it is inescapable_

_Because it always ends where it begins_

"_I have a surprise for you." The Good Doctor stood and walked around his desk to kneel next to Todd where he sat in the visitor's chair. He pulled from behind his back a white paper bag with Todd's name written in thick black letters._

"_I know it's hard for you to make friends, Todd. If you don't feel you can talk to me then I may have something that'll help." He set the bag on Todd's lap and he slowly, so as to not startle his patient, opened the top._

"_He's a friend, like me. A friend you can trust. Until you are ready to talk to me you can talk to him. He won't tell me your secrets, though. I promise. When you are ready to talk to me about those you can and not a moment sooner." Todd reached inside while the Doctor held open the bag and pulled out a brand new Teddy Bear._

"_What are you going to name him?" Todd just looked at the bear in his hands. The unnamed Bear grinned widely at him._

"_Do you like him?" The Bear was set on the boy's legs where the bag once was and continued to just be stared at. The Doctor picked up the white bag and threw it in the trash. When he looked over at Todd again his lips were moving and the Bear was being held close to his chest. He couldn't understand or even hear what was being said but making the movements for the words he needed to say was as a good a start as any._

_He didn't interrupt them, not until their time was up and he dismissed the silent child back into the negligent car of his mother with his usual goodbye. He figured that Todd needed someone to talk to, even if it was only a Bear._

X

End Chapter Three

Sorry it was so short. And no songs were used in this chapter except for the quote at the top which is from Massive Attack's Dissolve Girl.

Reviews encourage me to continue, please review even if only to criticize.


	4. Terrible Touch

I made a reference to Fatal Frame 3 if any of you played the game. See if you can find the reference.

Warning; This chapter has a very ambient feel to it by the way.

"_Unto an evil counselor close heart and ear and eye . . ."_

Spiderfly

Chapter 4

The alleyway was spotted with lights leading back towards where the Happy Times side entrance was. He saw the back entrances of many different kinds of stores, restaurants, and shops. Every now and then he'd see somebody step out to smoke or grab a breath of air. They hardly spared him a glance as he walked by them; dodging the rings of light from above the doors they opened and closed so easily.

His boots barely scuffed the floor as he walked, he hardly made a sound as he moved and whether or not this was from his natural organic programming or some outside force keeping him under the spectrum he didn't know. Johnny slid in and out of focus too quickly for anyone to get a good enough look at.

Some people, though, reached out to what they couldn't see properly. They saw something strange and touched out of either curiosity or in malice because they believed that touching something that wavered like smoke was okay. They believed that the intangible couldn't hurt them back. A door slammed somewhere behind him and he heard the clinking of glass and the gruff voices of two men opening a dumpster.

Two bright lights above a door to his right made him stop. The Happy Times logo was printed on the neon green door in bright Red Letters and black words wrapping around the big and round brass doorknob read; Walk Ins.

'_Are you still listening to me?'_

What was he doing? His hand was reaching out again of its own will to touch the doorknob, to grab it and open the door with a quick twist. It was reaching out to follow a mother and child he didn't know, into a place he'd never been.

"_The faces, all I see are shadows and seamless skin. No eyes or mouth, there's nothing." _

_Nny sat up, his right arm and thigh dripping red from lying in the glass, "I can't remember anything." He buried his face in his knees and hugged his legs. Larvae were eating at his brain._

'_You need to learn to control your temper tantrums, Nny.'_

The tip of his finger brushed the cold metal and he snapped back into focus. His hand was already gripping it and turning. Everything in front of him blurred and neon green turned black. The hand reaching up for the doorknob was small, pale and shaking as it only just managed to pull the door open.

"_These nightmares will fade, I promise." A man, someone who was nice, somebody who bought him and his mother things reached out to ruffle his hair. The touch was comforting._

"Malnutrition, dehydration, stress, sleep deprivation, possible chronic insomnia . . ."

"_Take this." His father was speaking this time and giving him some of his mother's medicine for when he screamed. He was seeing monsters in the night, crawling from his back._

"_Shut up you little-!" His mother woke him from his night terrors into a very real one with angry slaps and a raised fist. His father pulled her off just as he slipped into a dreamless black._

_The doctor was darker than his dad, but not by much. His eyes were brown, hair black, Gabriel Manning was smiling at Todd sadly. His mother never paid any medical bills._

"_He's an old friend, says he'll help Todd through this, he owes me a favor." She reached up to take her pills from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, "He just wants to help." And they both know this is a lie._

"_Did they catch the guy?"Mr. Casil sitting at the kitchen table, staring into his hands._

"_Who?" Looking into her eyes he saw nothing._

"_The one who attacked Todd."_

"_Yes, he tried taking another kid from the mall again."_

_A man he didn't know reaching for him, grabbing his shirt. Screaming but not making a sound, the smell of sweat and the sting of cold night air on his skin and in his cuts. Breathing, hurting, crying, running, falling, not understanding why . . ._

_Mr. Casil glanced back at his wife, she was examining a pair of faux silver earrings with subtle interest. There were so many people today. It took about a minute for him to real__ize that something was missing._

_Todd was gone._

_Two hours later; "We found him."_

"We need to contact the hospital, Doctor. He should be admitted to the proper facilities for evaluation. We don't have the equipment or the right to handle adults."

"It's time to wake up." Johnny's eyes opened immediately, the woman was startled but the man beside her in a white lab coat just smiled.

"Your name?" He pushed himself up to his elbows and just looked around. The room was small, an examination room perhaps, he was laid out on a high and stiffly cushioned bench that was so small his legs dangled off the side. The walls were gray and bright and colorful pictures were hanging all around him.

"Sorry if you're uncomfortable. We're not used to accommodating anyone over the age of sixteen." The man was a little on the short side, about 5ft 4in tall, with dark skin and thick black hair. He held out a burly hand that Nny ignored in favor of pushing himself off of the bench.

"I didn't quite catch your name, Sir." He watched as Nny wandered curiously towards one of the walls.

"Johnny." He said simply. The doctor nodded over to the woman who took down some notes and prompted him further.

"Johnny-?" The posters, though bright and surrounded by flowers and smiley faces, warned of deadly and highly contagious diseases one could catch if they didn't wash their hands every day. He wondered, with a smile on his own face, what people would think if he told them he came into contact with blood on a daily basis and had yet to catch anything.

"Johnny C."

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. C." Nny turned from investigating a poster depicting images of staph infections to bow for the Doctor.

"Likewise, Mr-?"

"Herring, Anthony Herring. I'm the head Doctor here at Happy Times Correctional Facility."

"Since when did doctors run correctional facilities? I thought the state did that." Dr. Herring wondered quietly if the young man was perhaps homeless, he didn't smell but his clothes were a little threadbare.

"Dr. Herring?" The young woman near the door called out and held out the clipboard in her hand. He walked over, around Johnny to take it from her.

"We found you near the side-entrance, you'd passed out before we brought you in. How did you end up out there, Mr. C.?"

"You didn't answer my question." The Doctor looked up from the clipboard with a politely confused expression.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Since when did doctors run correctional facilities for children?" Johnny smiled and said it slowly, pronouncing each word carefully. The Dr. Herring bristled at his tone.

His bag was still in his car, Nny realized and he wondered if being in a clinic meant he would find something useful lying around. The mumbling man looked away and the woman stepped forward to speak to him.

"How about a tour? I could show you Happy Times and explain exactly what it is we do here before you leave. Dr. Herring is, _after all_, a very busy man and has a lot of patients to watch after." She looked over at the Doctor and gently pushed him out the door. Johnny watched warily as she dumped the clipboard on the table and reached under the cabinet to pull out a bin.

"Your keys were the only thing we found on you." She set them on the table near the clipboard. "We decided to wait until you woke up before we called the nearby hospital. How are you feeling?" She started making notes on the papers she had.

"Any pain? Are you experiencing any hallucinations or having trouble hearing?" He snatched his keys off of the table and the woman jerked back.

"Can we just skip the paperwork? I have to get going soon and I don't want-" Johnny pulled open the door just as someone went running by. They streaked by in front of him, screaming as they went.

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?" a scraggly blonde person twirled in circles as they sang and ran only a little ways down the hall. The nurse behind him excused herself to join several other staff members as they tried to subdue the person, an obvious patient, screaming.

"But the snail replied 'Too far, too far," and gave a look askance. Said he thanked the whiting kindly but he would not join the dance!"

"Calm down Ms. Jacobs, everything is alright!"

"Dance with me, Nancy!"

"Let's get you to your room, Leslie."

"'What matters it-!'" A nurse made a grab for her, "'how far we go?' his scaly friend replied!" Jacobs jerked her arm away and started running back the way she came, "'There is another shore, you know, upon the otherside!'"

"Grab her!" Johnny couldn't see her face amidst the mess of matted blonde hair as she skid past him again, through some double doors to his right down the hall, the nurses and two doctors running after her. Even the woman who was supposed to be watching him had followed her, a needle in her hand. He watched them until they disappeared entirely and slipped out towards the other end of the hallway. Almost everyone was gone and the people left didn't pay him any mind.

"That Leslie girl's almost as bad as her mother."

"Her mom used to attack other patients though, she should have been moved across the city when they found out she was pregnant."

"She was fifteen, still young enough to be here." The two women at the nurses' station sat gossiping while they did their work. Johnny thought, as he continued down the hall that he could still hear the girl singing in the distance.

"Yeah but did you hear that Dr. Manning . . ." the hall opened up to what he guessed was the front entrance, the double glass doors letting in what little light was provided from the street lamps outside. Just before he walked towards the gate that lead to what he guessed was a waiting area the outside door lights flickered on and caught his attention. Looking over he saw the woman and her child from the convenience store walking out of an elevator beside the nurses' station. He stared in disbelief at his luck.

"You did well this time, honey. When we get home-"

"_It's none of your business!"_ Why had he followed them here? Johnny saw the mother gently grasp the boy's hand and lead him out the doors with a sick sense of dread and the quick creep of anger.

_. . . to keep you hungry! _

"_Why would you tell me that-!"_

_. . . that fucking need for sensation no matter how sick the circumstances. People touching and feeling without abandon, without inhibition or reserve! Just the thought of it makes me want to rip the skin from my body and use it to gag a prostitute with the __**awareness**__ of suffocation. Hunger stems from that desperate and physical need for the physical world and in the end the touch leaves us empty, hungry for more. It drags us with our appetite, beats us with our loneliness, and thrills us because it is the only thing that proves we are alive, but not awake! Even in our dreams we feel those damningly necessary hungers when all we need is silence, even if only enough to gather our thoughts. I don't want touch to be the only thing that keeps me aware when I'm not even sure if what I'm aware of is real. __**Etched**__ into our thoughts and skin over and over and over . . ._

"_Your mother and I only want to help you, Todd." _

"_I don't think I'm Todd anymore."_

"_Gabriel I don't think he's going to be okay . . ."Mrs. Casil sobbing into Dr. Manning's shirt._

"_Don't cry, I'll help him in any way I can. I don't want you to worry about a thing."_

_. . . and over until our mind and bodies are a mess of lines and words that make no fucking sense. No matter how much is chipped away we still feel every line cut, every need carved into us. It leaves behind horrifying scars that displace us, separating who we are from who we were . . ._

"_I don't think I'm Todd . . ." and then abrupt silence._

They said you were a sweet boy

But all I see is wrong

_What do you see?_

_I want you to look at it and concentrate._

Numb, he moved without realizing what he was doing towards the door. He followed them out, his keys jingling loosely in his hand but they did not hear him. They walked past the convenience store, the clerk an older man this time, and Johnny's car. He didn't even stop to grab his bag but followed the two of them in the dark like a man possessed.

When all that sweetness is used up

You'll sing an empty song

_She was the one who let go of him._

"_. . . again, that moment always in my eyes . . . etched in there over and over, again . . ."_

"_Todd?" his voice barely above a whisper but he was speaking and that in itself was promising._

"_. . . my eyes . . . etched in there over and over, again, again . . ."_

"_How are your parents doing?" Todd stilled for a moment just staring at the window. At first he didn't make a sound until a shadow flapped across the glass and he looked up at Dr. Manning, then down at his desk. He clutched at his teddy bear, fingers digging into the fabric._

_The empty jar was still sitting right in front of him, gleaming and full. _

"_They won't stop talking."_

"_What do they talk about?"_

"_Someone named . . ." Dr. Manning sat up straight in his chair. His fingers itched for his pen._

"_Who?"_

"_It's not empty anymore."_

"_What?"_

"_I see something." A breakthrough, the road uphill, the doctor felt the joy of the promise of success and Todd's possible recovery._

"_What do you see?" Todd looked through the glass with curious, brown eyes. There were too many to count, he was sure. They flew around in zigzagging shapes, into the walls of their prison and each other buzzing louder and louder._

You'll sing of dying butterflies

Of bugs and crocodiles

You'll sing of empty towns and streets

That run for empty miles

Walking down the sidewalk felt wrong, he should be running, he should be hurting her. He should be screaming.

_Alone in his room and cradling his friend in his arms, Todd listened to the screaming coming from downstairs. Weeks had passed and bruises had healed but something had been broken beyond repair and it tore at his hands and legs like the long and twisted fingers of a nameless and faceless fear. While his parents fought Todd huddled in his bed, jumping at the sound of a vicious thud a floor down. Possibilities slipped into his head like poison and swirls of smoke drifted from under his bed and out of his closet, carrying voices that whispered things Todd didn't want to hear. He sobbed under his blanket._

"_Shmee, make the bad thoughts go away. I don't want to remember anymore."_

X

End Chapter 4

Thank you to those who reviewed Chapter three and Hannah for Chapter 2.

Hannah- Any review given dignifies a story as long as it isn't childish or rude, of which your review was neither. Thank you for reading and liking what you read.

I can't remember if I replied to these personally or not so just in case;

wolfWhispers-Thank you, I have fun completely twisting a cult classic comic book to suit my own deranged ideas. Tis great fun.

Invader Jay- Yes it is in the past, but the real question is whose past. Thank you for the review

Neo-kun- I'm glad you're enjoying it. Thanks for the review.

The song sung by Leslie is from Lewis Carroll's The Lobster Quadrille and is based on Mary Howitt's poem Said the Spider to the Fly which is where the top quote comes from. Lyrics at the end of this chapter are from a poem titled Monster and it was written by me. For the full poem either log in and leave a review stating that you'd like it or, for those without an account, leave me a working email address and I'll send it to you.

Monster is not the official Spiderfly poem, by the way. That comes later. This more of a children's rhyme sort of song.

Please review for the next chapter.


	5. I am the Second

"Cast a boat, take a ride."

Spiderfly

Chapter Five

I am the Second

"_We found him." Mrs. Casil stared blandly at the police officer who addressed her and her husband. The policeman looked between the parents in confusion. Mr. Casil stepped forward, asking if they could see their son. "He's had a rough couple of hours, Mr. Casil but yeah, you can see him. They've got him strapped in the ambulance." As he walked across the rain dampened street, the parents in tow behind him he felt compelled to let them know before they saw Todd._

"_Where was he?"_

"_We found him wandering the alleyway behind the mall, he's pretty banged up, sir. Paramedics think he might be the victim of a pedophile we've been trying to catch for the last few weeks. We'll need to take him up to the hospital to do a rape kit, just to be sure." Mrs. Casil said nothing, her mind a million miles away. Mr. Casil felt the creep of disgust in his belly._

"_Is that why he's strapped down?" The officer looked back at the father and nodded just as they walked around to the back of the ambulance._

"_Yes, sir. He was hysterical when we found him." Screaming could be heard, loud and piercing through the wet and chilly night air. His son, their son, was screaming as loud as his little lungs would allow. Mrs. Casil stayed closer to the officer, to the door while Todd's father climbed into the back of the bus to kneel beside him._

_He was wheezing, his teeth chattering and clenching, Todd's father stared helplessly down at him unsure of what to do. He tried to offer comfort, to wipe the icy cold bangs from his son's forehead but the boy flinched helplessly and began hyperventilating. He ripped his hand away and let the paramedic take over, whispering small and comforting words to Todd to keep him calm. _

_zzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzz_

_Buzzing and buzzing like the maniacal purr of a bee. Todd screamed as the white noise swelled into an ear piercing shriek. There were voices next to him but he couldn't hear them very well, his eyes stared straight above him but saw nothing but white. Finally, when the noise became too much too soon the white he saw behind his eyelids expanded to black, and the agonizing noise to quiet._

"_Todd."_

_'I don't think I'm . . .' Looking into the mirror and seeing a familiar face._

"_Todd, wake up."_

_'I don't think I'm . . .' Todd was dreaming of someone to protect him, if only for a moment. He was seeing a familiar face._

"_This is bad."Mr. and Mrs. Casil were in his hospital room, days had passed but their son had not woken up._

"_He's always been a little strange, somewhat odd but never like this."They were opposite each other, his mother sitting to his right, his father standing to his left._

"_This is not my fault!"_

"_I never said-!"_

"_I don't have a problem! I don't!"_

"_I never said it was your fault. You didn't ask for that disgusting prick to take him. I know it's not because of you, we didn't do anything wrong here." Mrs. Casil grew quiet, staring at the floor under her chair._

"_How long until we can go home?"_

"_They said he'll have to stay here for awhile, to make sure that the brain damage isn't too extensive . . ."_

"_Brain damage? He has brain damage now?"_

"_Fucking perverted ass-wipe tried to choke the life out of him, not enough oxygen to his brain and all. They said he might be a little unstable now."He watched his wife warily as she reached out to toy with his dark hair._

"_Oh, God, my son." Mrs. Casil suddenly lunged at Todd, her hands pulling at his hair. "I wish you were dead! You wouldn't be hurting if you were dead!" Mr. Casil dashed around the bed and grabbed her by her waist, hauling her into the hallway._

"_Stop!"_

"_I never should have had you. I should have let you die, my baby, he's in so much pain!"_

"_Stop it now!"She slumped to the floor in his arms. Sobs sent violent spasms through her heaving body and her husband wondered if it was a good idea to let her go. He sat for the first time in years with his wife cradled carefully near him and let the worry for their son settle in. It was obvious he couldn't trust her around Todd anymore._

_As I lay me down to sleep_

_And those I love begin to weep_

_I give to you my soul to take_

_Should I die before I wake_

_Back inside the room, Todd, a little askew from his mother's attack, didn't even shift from the quiet he'd settled into. He enjoyed it, savored it and missed it when it made way for confusing thoughts and dreams. He dreamed that he was in his bedroom, staring at the ceiling and praying to God that he'd wake up in the morning alive and healthy._

'_Johnny . . .' some skewed version of himself reaching out from obscure places, the closet, under his bed with smoky tendrils for fingers. _

'_Everything's gonna be aaaaallllright . . .' those fingers turning into tentacles, still reaching for him as it whispered. 'I'll make the bad things go away.'_

_He moved to sit Indian style on his bedcovers as a shadow slid from under his bed to loom over him. He heard screaming from downstairs. _

'_No more monsters while I'm around.' It slid closer and closer to him._

'_They won't hurt you with me here . . .'_

"_Todd?" Mr. Casil walked back in to see Todd sitting up in bed just staring at the ceiling. He'd called a taxi for his wife and had returned to say goodbye. "Nurse?!" He called out, running towards the station at the end of the hall._

_So as we make our last adieu_

_One last thing I'll give to you_

"_Todd, sweetie? Can you hear me?" The nurse checked his pulse and shined a light in his eyes. The action made a whining noise spur behind the buzzing in his ear. Another nurse walked in, followed by his father._

"_I'm going to go get his doctor." And she ran out. The nurse on his bed turned Todd's face towards her but his eyes stayed glued to that one spot on the ceiling._

"_Todd-?"_

'_I don't think I'm . . .'_

"_He's seizing!"_

"_Get Dr. Hartfeild in here!"_

"_Mr. Casil, we're going to need for you to step outside."_

_He was pushed out just as Todd's body locked up._

"_We need a breathing tube now!" The doctor ran in just as they shut the door and closed the blinds._

_Take with you all that I am_

_And hold it near you till the End_

"_I'm getting so fucking tired of this."_

X

She woke up blind with the familiar sensation of her couch under her back. She could smell something acrid in the air and hear the slow creaking of her swinging kitchen door across the room. Emily Warter's first thoughts were of her son down the hall and then of the fact that she couldn't move her arms or legs.

"Hello?" she called out. Something she'd taken the night before still lingered in her skin hair and clothes, a smell and smoky feel that choked her sweetly and left her dazed and cool. She heard shifting and then something grabbed her and pulled her from the comfort of her furniture and into the abrupt wall of reality. "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?"

"Where is your son right now?"

"Don't you fucking touch-!" and she fell straight down to the ground. She realized with the way her legs twisted beneath her that they were tied probably by the ankles. She couldn't actually feel anything below her mid thigh which made her wonder why they were tied at all. "What have you done to me?"

"It is a simple question, I'll give you that. Maybe it is too simple for you to fully grasp the importance of. So I'll rephrase the question. Do you know where your child, your son, is right now?" The voice left her ice cold inside.

Sam?! SAMMY! Where are you?! WHEREVER YOU ARE, BABY, RUN! Get out of the house!"

Johnny waited patiently beside the couch for her to finish.

"What the FUCK have you DONE WITH MY SON?"

"It is ten thirty in the morning, where is he?" He asked her through her yelling. She struggled wildly screaming Sam's name. He watched as her hands turned purple from her pulling while her legs remained still and immobile. Johnny reached down and grabbed the woman by the back of her shirt and hauled her up again. She made a shrill choking noise when the collar of her blouse slammed into her neck.

"You fucking parents can't even keep track of your own damn offspring. You couldn't let go of him last night could you, is that because you have a hard time remembering where he is? You smell like weed and shit you twat waffling procrastinator. Your son smells that every day," He slammed her back down on the couch, coughing and sputtering, "He sees it every night, when you invite your shitty friends over. When you forget to turn off the fucking stove and let the kitchen catch on fire. When you fuck random hobos from wherever you can find them. You useless excuse for a caretaker," Emily screamed savagely, thrashing against air and ropes, "every fucking day he sees you fucking him up before he even has a chance to figure his shit out!"

"LET ME GO!"

"We're going to conduct a little experiment. It's a memory exercise."

"SAMMY!" She called out again.

"You're going to guess where your son is and for every answer you get wrong I'm going to cut something off." She heard the slide of metal scraping metal. He reached down and stabbed the knife into her hip. The tip of the blade hit bone and she howled. Johnny grabbed the blindfold around her eyes and slid it down to stuff in her mouth. Her muffled voice made no sounds that remotely resembled words. She looked up at her attacker, the dark light of recognition shining in her eyes. Anger swelled in her busted yells and calls. Gripping the edge of the couch Johnny slid the short knife down her leg, scraping her hip bone through her skirt. His hand became uncomfortably warm so close to the blood. He wanted to wipe the greasy feel of her off of him.

"Shut the hell up! Your squealing is annoying. You're grating on my nerves and that can't be good for your precious Sammy." He spat. She screwed up her face and sobbed when he pulled away entirely. When she looked at him again he knew she remembered him from the store.

"You know me, but you can't even try to guess where your Sam is? Think, I know it can be a daunting task, but try. Where is your son?" She started talking through the makeshift gag, indecipherable grunts and sobs he thought might have made up an answer. He listened very carefully to her noises and nodded a few times when she stopped to breathe. Finally she started crying in frustration when he had been listening to her blubbering for five minutes and had yet to take off the gag.

"So you don't know." He sat cross legged on the floor, a backpack and duffel bag underneath the coffee table beside him, "I have an idea, let's go and look for him. How's that?" He stood up dramatically and walked around the couch towards one of the hallways that lead further into the one story shack Emily and Sam lived in. "If you can tell me where he is when we're done I'll let you go." She threw herself off of the couch with her attempts to stand up. Her son's face came to mind and she wondered if he was even still alive. Was he was dead in the bathroom or hanging in the closet? Could he be in tiny pieces in a shoe box or bound in the ceiling. Her son was dead, he was gone and dead.

"What are you doing?" She looked back over her shoulder to see the skinny man from the store leaning on the back of the couch. "Don't you want to find your son? Don't you want to find Sammy?" She rocked from side to side on the ground screaming through the blindfold, "Do you need help getting off of the floor?" He walked around to her and reached down. She flinched away, rolling towards the three-seater couch to see Johnny pull his cat claw meat hooks from his black duffel bag.

Before she could even blink he had slammed the claws into her back, hooking them in her left shoulder blade. The scream echoing from her gagged mouth came from the center of her being. It was loud and agonizing. He lifted her easily and she flopped away from him. Johnny let go of the hooks, leaving them embedded in her back, and reached down to untie her legs.

"Just a minute." Before he grabbed her by the hook again.

He pulled her behind him towards the hallway to where her son's room was. She could feel the metal in her scratching bone and ripping her skin to shreds. When they reached the door Johnny threw her against it and into the room.

"Where's your son?" She saw white hot flashes behind her eyes when the hooks in her back slid along the floor. After a moment she looked around the room, still sobbing and heaving shuttering breathes, to see that her son was not there. She could see his closet door open, the space under his bed, Emily could see the vents and the desk that had been given to him by one of her ex-boyfriends. Her son's space, his carpet and green wallpaper tarnished only by splatters of her own blood. She couldn't stop the tears from dripping to the floor. "So he's not here?" She suddenly felt nauseous. "So we'll try again, I'm going to let you talk and you're going to tell me where we go from here. If you don't have a helpful suggestion for where I should take you I'll remove your tongue from your head." She nodded and groaned when he half lifted her by the hair to remove the gag. She coughed when she could breathe freely again.

"M-my Sammy?"

"Where do we go next?" She clenched her teeth and hissed when he grabbed the cat claw hook again and pulled her to her feet.

"Ups-sstairs."

X

_Lifetimes had passed, decades upon centuries upon light-years had gone by. Todd stared down at his shoes and waited for his new Friend to wake up again._

"_I don't think he's going to be okay." Her voice was trembling and sad, he thought. He wondered why she was so sad._

"_I'll do everything I can."_

_Maybe He would come back tonight. Maybe they could talk again, if he reached out maybe they could stay together always. Todd hoped so._

"_Todd, I want you . . . friend . . . you . . . Manning . . ."_

"_Hello Todd, I'm . . . help . . .let me . . ."and then something called to his attention, something he knew this Good Doctor wouldn't understand._

'_Hello~ Todd . . .' his Friend called sweetly, mocking Dr. Manning. Finally He was awake. Smokey tendrils reached out to touch his hand in a gesture of comfort._

_He smiled sweetly in his daze and his mother had never looked so happy._

X

They went upstairs, to the bathroom, to her bedroom, they checked every closet and cupboard, looked under the beds and in the bathtubs. Her son was not upstairs.

"A-ah-ttic." She managed and wobbled towards her bedroom again. Against the back of her closet was a door that led to the attic's stairway. They stumbled up the stairs, she more than her attacker. When the two of them got to the top he wretched the hooks from her back and she screamed as she fell to the dusty floor. Emily felt the deafening cry of pain wrestle with her hoarse vocal chords.

"I don't see him up here." She opened her eyes and struggled to get up but she felt drained and lethargic. When she glanced up and saw the man looking around curiously she saw that the hook in his hand had red and bloody chunks hanging from it. "Where else?"

"I d-don't know."

"What?"

"I SAID-D; I DON'T KNOW!" She fell back and felt the dirt and dust coat her bloody back. "I just dun know."

"I'll bet your life that if you try really hard you can figure it out."

"I jus don-!"

"Fucking try!"

"I can't! He's dead, my son is dead!" Emily was sobbing, through the dust and blood, it left streaks on her face.

"Somehow I thought you might actually get this one, it's so impossibly easy. It is now eleven fourteen, where is your son?"

It was choking, the dust. Her mind felt muffled, her head thick and muggy. Something warm and wet was soaking her arms and legs.

"I want you to figure it out."

"Then j-just tell me . . ."

"NO! You have to know, you have to remember!"

Foggy and tired and empty and quiet and Sammy and Sam and Sam and sam and . . .

"Sammy?" but her son didn't answer. The room became uncomfortably quiet around them.

"I want you to remember." Soft, quiet but dangerous and disappointed, Johnny took slow steps towards Emily and she whined.

"No . . ."

"It's just like a little drug addict like you to forget something so important and obviously simple. Is what you're feeling now anywhere near what you feel when you smoke your own shit?!" She saw the hooks as they fell, and screamed when they ripped through the skin of her stomach. "Since you are still so very caught up in this inane high of yours let me bring you down to earth a little. Maybe I can wake you up."

_Schink!_

Emily teetered on the edge of unconsciousness for a very long time but never actually blacked out. When a cord from nowhere wrapped around her neck and lifted her into the air she choked but didn't die. When a long blade skewered her diaphragm she cried, sobbed and howled but stayed awake. She died aware, trapped by feeling of smoke leaving her system and tortured by the hunger for more.

X

Sammy Winchester, it was his father's last name and God only knew where the man was now, trudged towards his home from school tired and silently angry. He wondered as he slipped inside his front door how long it would take for his mother's last hit to wear from her system. He secretly hoped she hadn't broken any of the dishes in a drug induced haze again. That would be difficult to explain to his grandmother when she came by later.

He threw his backpack in the hall closet and prayed that this time she was smart enough not to call any of her boyfriends before she was recovered enough to deal with them.

I am the Second

Alone in a faceless crowd

"Mom?" The place was a mess, things had been knocked over, pictures thrown from the tabletops and walls. He knew he wouldn't be able to pick the place up before his rulebook thumping Granny got there. He was not looking forward to the fight he knew would take place between her and his mother. Sam sighed and decided to concentrate on cleaning his mom up enough to help him straighten up a little.

There was a smell in the air, something pungent and overpoweringly subtle. He looked over at the couch, sidestepping glass from various picture frames, when he noticed something dark and widespread on the fabric of the right side. When he got up close he reached out to touch it but the thick stain was dry. The smell lingered and it only took him a few moments to realize what it was.

"Oh, Mom." He really wished she would be more careful around glass, she must have cut herself, "there's so much of it." He looked around the living room and down the hallway that led to his bedroom, noticing that the door was open. She'd gone through his room.

"God damn it." He made his way slowly towards that side of the house, pushing the door open to assess the damage. Late afternoon light spilled through his windows and the stark contrast between his green walls and the dried blood was almost blinding. Sam pushed the door open further and saw that the door itself had a large splat of red on it.

A human caught

In monochrome dreams

"Mom!" he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him, tripping in the hallway, noticing for the first time that there were dark, almost black splotches on the carpet. He ran upstairs, slamming through door after door, looking under every bed, in every closet, the bathtubs and even the cupboards to no avail. He ran back to her bedroom. The red was everywhere he looked, in splashes and smears as if his mother had been looking and touching everything she could. Or perhaps someone covered in her blood had been looking through everything. Had they been robbed?

He looked over at her jewelry box, filled to the brim with gifts from men who had at first clamored for her attention. It looked like a lot, if not all, of it was still there. He was getting really frightened. What if the person was still in the house? Where was his mom? Why had this happened?

I scream to wake up

Sam checked her bathroom first, as it was closest to the doorway. When he didn't find anything he decided to check the attic. She might be hiding up there. He walked over to her closet, tiny tremors rattling her nerves as he reached for the hatch to open the door to the stairwell.

It wouldn't budge.

"Mom!" She must have locked it from the inside. He banged on the door, tiny splinters from the wood catching on his hands. He called, screamed and begged for his mother to open the door. "Mommy, please!"

My voice drowns

Deep underground

When his Grandmother arrived two hours later she called the police. Sammy was spared the sight of his mother's body and was taken to live with his Granny hours away from the city. When the cops busted the door down the smell and sight they encountered made many of them sick.

Emily was hanging from the rafters by a metal cord from a spool of workman's wire found in the attic. It wrapped around her neck and body, cutting into her decomposing flesh. Her blouse and skirt were dark and stiff in some places, and her arms were bound behind her back with thin kitchen rag. She was swinging gently from side to side, her feet far from the ground, her skin grey and greasy.

Only the dead can see me

Hear me

X

_Johnny pushed his way through door after door never feeling more lost in his own home. The hallways just seemed to jumble together, every corner he turned, every room he crossed all faded into the noise._

_Follow the little white . . . little red . . ._

_Dust coating the surface of his dreams in a fine mist that clogged the senses but heightened the sensation of touch in his skin. It reached out and tried to grab him from a space beneath the wall._

_Someone running from him, hiding from him, reaching out to bring him back home with long and wispy fingers covered in a grimy poison. He was sure he'd die if he went back._

_There! A flash of red disappearing into a room only about six meters ahead of him. Was that? No, it couldn't be him, he shouldn't be here. He ran up to the door but stopped himself from actually opening it._

_Johnny skimmed his palm on the cool wood, almost willing it to give him its secrets. __He__ was on the other side, __He__ was calling him back._

"_Squee?"_ _The room seemed to sigh under his hand._

X

End chapter Five

Poem in the flashback is one written by me that was inspired by a bedtime prayer.

Lyrics in the second half are from Rain of Brass Petals (Three Voices Edit) from the Silent Hill soundtrack.

Review replies;

Akatsuki Feathers- I think I already replied to you on deviantart.

Gibberish- It's not weird at all, I wanted the flashbacks to remind people of watching a really old or damaged roll of film because I imagine the white noise in Nny's head would probably make things difficult to for him or anyone else to fully understand. Things are happening in this new and yet oddly familiar place and it's making him feel when he's trying not to.

Arufabetto- Thank you. This story is mostly from Nny's PV so most of the scattering is intentional, I'm trying really hard to take his mental state into consideration.

- Now I feel like an emo child, writing things that make people cry. I'm glad you enjoyed it though. Thank you for reviewing to say so.

Ninalesca- I'm glad I could bring something to you all that you enjoy reading. Thank you for the nice review and for reading the last two stories.

WolfWhispers- I know how that is, staying up too late n all. Glad you liked this chapter and hope you enjoyed this one as well.

Sam Strange- Thank you. I think sometimes I try a little too hard but I'm doing it because writing is what I love to do. I bring the poetry in to sort of add to the feeling of 'strangeness'. Children's poems are always, I think, the most interesting poems because of the meanings hidden behind the simplistic style of writing. It's creepy and honest but not overdone.

I think in a way that you guys inspire me to continue this story. I can't tell you how many times, especially after chapter two, that I wanted to stop.

Thanks and review for the next chapter.


	6. A Stray Child

Pre-fic ramble: The quote used at the very beginning, down below is from the Monster Poem written by me. The quote after that, in the story is from Poe's track titled 'Dear Johnny'. Near the bottom of the page, the quote that goes; "You can pray . . . it cared." is taken from JTHM and was written by Jhonen Vasquez.

Akatsuki Feathers: I hope not too confusing. I'd hate to turn you away from this story . . .

Hannah: Thank you, again. I can understand why Jhonen wouldn't want to continue with the comics. I have to go to a very dark place just to write the draft for this. I'm a mood writer so I can honestly say that I'll be glad when the trilogy is done. This storyline was fun to write for when I first started posting because I'd never done something like it but now it's very daunting. I keep trying to outdo myself with each chapter.

WolfWhispers: incase I haven't already replied: I hope this chapter makes things easier to understand what I was doing with the end of that last chapter.

Kyd Chaos: Thankies!

MissMarientose: Thank you so much! That's a very nice thing to say. .

Now! Everyone, before you start reading, clear your mind of happy thoughts because happiness and Squee don't mix! Dogs die and people explode . . .

You don't want to explode, do you?

"Something's reaching out to you / something in your skin / is taking all that's left of you / and eating it again."

Spiderfly

Chapter Six

A Stray Child

_Dreaming, sleeping, crying, shrieking . . ._

_Buzzing like the tiny screams of wicked little things . . ._

_A filter is removed from a ventilation system . . . the bad thoughts . . . leaking in because there is nothing to keep them out . . ._

_Johnny dear_

_Don't be afraid_

_Johnny is standing in the middle of a familiar road of nothing, all around him is an expanse of wasteland and his car is out of gas. Where are the others? Did he make a wrong turn?_

_People are built with filters, nets to catch the sickness before it eats away at their tiny brains. When the filter is removed the filth of the world sinks inside, like a heavy sludge that drops like quicksand. The dirt disguises its host, hides it, shelters it until the person cannot handle the seclusion any longer. The only way to plug a sink hole is to stuff a dead body inside of it._

_There are always exceptions, no system is perfect. Every machine has multiple filters, some are vital, some are not. Removing the wrong one could do nothing or something unexpected. The machine could continue on in a normal fashion or blow up from a malfunction or system failure, neither scenario is an ideal result._

_Nny looks down the road, in the distance seeing a world of grayscale and sketchy lines. Behind him the city his house was built in. Everything there is written in excruciating detail with black shadows and lurking monsters born from the excrement of humanity. He has a feeling that despite the vividness and clarity of the world behind him the answer he is looking for can only be found in that place of random structures and unremarkable people. _

_I will keep_

_Your secret safe_

_He thinks of Reverend Meat, The Doughboys, and The One Who Got Away, of Kind Strangers, and Beautiful Ugly People. He thinks of screaming children, Squee, and wonders how anyone could stay that untainted in a place of shit and lies. The world behind him is so misguided and wrong, the buildings shouldn't stand, the people shouldn't exist, but they do and will continue to as long as the system finds a way to funnel out as much human waste as possible so nobody suffocates in it._

_Even with exceptions the system works, even with people like Johnny it keeps humanity from drowning._

_The house behind him says it has a new guest, a new friend . . ._

_No bodies inside this House of Flies, no death, only false memories of a man who didn't really exist in the first place. Buzzing and buzzing like bugs in a jar._

_A record on repeat, over and over and over and over and over . . ._

_Merry go-round with no time limit . . . thoughts in random circles._

"_I don't think he's going to be okay."_

_Prolonged absence from an obscure and unreadable town. Johnny looks at The Graphite City and knows that someone there can give him the answers._

"_I don't think-!"_

"_Then who are you?" Screaming, finally the broken record zips to a halt._

"_-I'm Todd . . ."_

_He thinks of Nail Bunny and of all the useless conversations with a people who did and didn't listen. He thinks of his friends, the living and the dead, of voices and faces and faceless voices. _

_Nobody escapes the system._

X

_tap! tap! tap!_

_Squee running through his house, lost, lonely . . ._

'_Help me Johnny.'_

_Running after him, towards him, through him . . ._

'_Everything here is so . . .'_

_Tap! Tap! Tap!_

"Wake up! You can't park here all night." A flashlight in his eyes, through the window of his car. A police officer looking at him with an expressionless face, unafraid, unemotional, tapping the glass gently and caring enough not to startle Johnny. Said homicidal maniac peered up from the crook of his arm, confused and somewhat irritated. Looking around he realized he must have fallen asleep after grabbing a Freezy from the convenience store.

"Hey." The police officer waves to him and Nny blinks hazily back. "There's a motel a few streets up. On East and Fifth. They're sure to have pretty cheap rooms this late." The man gives him a thoughtless smile before walking back to his car. Johnny doesn't feel the need to follow him. He knows the man won't be back.

Careless, empty things.

A dream, Squee running, it was just a dream. Johnny stares at his steering wheel and wonders where he should go next. He needs answers, he is sure that some aspect of his history is in this shit hole town. He could start at the clinic, ask questions there. No, the clinic was probably closed and appearing in the middle of the night was hardly grounds for an interview with the staff. Nny stared out the window.

_Delivery trucks visit back entrance located in the alleyway near the intersection of East and Fifth._

_. . . back entrance . . ._

It was something to look into, he could stay at the motel until morning, sneak in through the back and ask the staff members some questions. Find out about the doctors, find out about some of the patients. He started up the engine of his car, pulling on to the street just as the patrolman made another round.

X

_Lying on the floor of his bedroom, just staring at the ceiling. It was Todd's first night on his own since he'd been back. His father had said it was for the best, mommy wasn't well enough to watch him like she should. The pills left a bad taste in his mouth._

"_They'll help you sleep, get up on the bed and I'll tuck you in." Todd slowly picked himself up and changed into his pajamas, his father dropped two tiny white pills on his dresser and handed him a short glass of water. He took the medication without complaint, he didn't want his mom to get mad at him again. Mr. Casil lifted the covers and slowly Todd crawled into bed._

"_We're leaving tomorrow." His father, still sitting on the bed beside him dropped his head into his hands, "I never meant for any of this to happen, to you or your mom . . ." he drifted off, eyes staring at Todd's tiny closet. "We're gonna make a fresh start, I think with the move I'll be offered a better position at work so we can get a bigger house." Todd's eyes drifted towards the glass of water as he listened to his dad go on and on._

"_Maybe things'll be better there, maybe your mom won't forget herself the way she does. I don't know." He stood, turning to smile forcefully at his son. "Pack your things in the morning. We're leaving as soon as possible" _

_Todd Casil looked up at his father, blinked quietly at him but said nothing. Mr. Casil let himself out, closing the door firmly behind him. In the hallway Todd could hear his dad telling his mother to go to bed, that she couldn't see him till morning. Mrs. Casil screamed._

"_You can't fucking tell me what to do or when I can see my son you selfish prick!"_

"_Go to our room and get some sleep. Everything's ready just calm down . . ."_

"_Get your hands off of me!"_

"_Go!"_

_More screaming, more crying and yelling. Todd looked out his tiny bedroom window and saw only the brickwork of the building next door. He wondered what view he'd have in his new home._

_-_

"_What do you think?" Todd clutched his Teddy Bear close as his parents walked further and further into their new home._

"_It's a lot bigger than that shitty apartment."_

"_Todd." They both looked towards the door to see the it open and Todd outside, standing on the sidewalk staring at the house next door. Mrs. Casil walked over to him and reached for his hand. Todd jerked away and broke out in a run towards the driveway for house 777. _

"_Todd Casil, you get back here right now!"_

"_Todd?"His dad called out from the front porch of their new home._

_He stopped right in front of the lawn, just staring at the front door. His half inebriated mother finally caught up to him and snatched his wrist. "Who lives there?"_

"_No one, let's get inside before the neighbors see."_

"_Who lives there?!"_

"_A Boogey man, now let's go before he gets you."_

"_But-!"_

"_No buts." The grip on his hand was tight and unyielding, if only it had been that way at the mall, if only she hadn't let go of him._

_Buzzing like flies in a jar, like the purr of an angry bee, like a machine running for too long, too hard . . ._

_When they got back to the porch Mr. Casil was inside, on the phone and he pointed towards the staircase._

"_Todd, your room will have to be upstairs, the big bedroom is down here and my office will be down the hall."_

_His mother didn't let go of him until she had the door shut and locked, once her hand left his he bolted up the stairs. He saw several closets and a tiny bathroom in the hall. The last door he checked hid a room much bigger than the bedroom he had back in their old place. He had a lot of space in here and the wallpaper looked somewhat fresh. They'd already brought furniture, his bed propped up right beside the window._

_He ran to the window and pulled it open. If he leaned out far enough he could actually see the house next door._

'_To~dd . . .'_

"_Shmee, do you think maybe __**he**__ lives there?" he looked down at the bear he clutched almost desperately to his chest. "Maybe that's why we moved down here, to be closer to him . . ."_

_He paused, briefly looking down at the dirty greenish brown fur. 'To~dd . . .'_

"_No silly, the one mommy and daddy talk about a lot, the one from a long time ago." He looked out again, staring at the filthy glass windows and grassless front yard. "I bet he __**does**__ live there." He was quiet for a long while, just staring at the rundown shack next door when he heard his father yelling downstairs._

"_I told you not to-!"_

_**CRASH**_

"_You give those back to me, I need them!" his mother screamed. More fighting, more yelling until finally a few minutes later the house grew quiet._

_Footsteps coming up the stairs, his mother from the shuffling. It couldn't be his dad, only his mom walked like that when she'd consumed her special pink pills, the ones from Dr. Gabriel. She walked closer and closer to his room until she eventually stopped right at his door. Todd waited as the silence stretched on and on, he stared at the doorway simply hoping she'd just go away._

'_To~dd . . .'_

"_Go away." He called out softly. A stiller silence this time. He turned to fully face the door, breathing, praying she'd just go. Finally he heard her move down the hall, her footfalls even softer than before. Todd breathed a little easier, he knew how she was when she took her meds._

"_That was close, Shmee."_

'_Todd!'_

_He looked out the window again, his Teddy squashed under him as he leaned out. "I bet he's there. I know he is." Leaning out further and further . . ._

'_Todd~!'_

_**SLAM**_

_More yelling, dad's deadline, anger and frustration. Todd pulled out of the window and locked it shut, somewhere inside he hoped that maybe things would actually be okay here. No more spooky dreams or wandering voices. He leaned against the wall under the window and hugged Shmee close._

"_Please let things be okay now."_

X

_Sometimes . . . you can cry until there is nothing wet left in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray all you want, to whatever God you think will listen._

_No one escapes the system._

The motel smelled like shit and beans.

It was a seedy place, the kind one might find when entering any busy city. Nny had walked up to the service counter and ringed the bell five minutes ago but no one had answered. The keys were scattered across the counter, the light above blinking rapidly, hissing at his presence. He watched a prostitute amble by outside and then he rang the bell again.

Johnny tapped a finger on the key to room number four. Six minutes later his patience had run out.

"I'm stealing this room you lazy mother fucker!" He screamed at the closed, and locked, door in the back of the room. There was a shuffling noise and then nothing. Nny twirled the large key ring on his finger as he left, whistling Leslie's song on his way back to his car. "Room number four, room number four . . ." He pulled in towards the main building, where all of the rooms were and looked from door to door for the right one.

"Room number four, room number four . . ."

He spotted it, at the far end, the last one on the bottom level. Maneuvering his car around broken glass and smashed bottles Nny pulled into the space in front of his room and parked the car. The lot was empty. He looked back towards the main office, its inner light still flickering on and off with no one manning the station. The wind outside whistled softly against his car as he grabbed his bag and Freezy, Nny popped open his door and stepped out of the car. Graffiti marked red walls stared back at him, Johnny looked around the empty and dark motel parking lot one last time before unlocking the door to Room Four and stepping inside.

It was relatively clean, once he turned on the lights. A bit dusty perhaps . . .

He dropped his bag on the bed and took another sip of his melting cherry-doom ice drink. The lights worked, the water and faucets were on, this place wasn't abandoned or anything. Johnny was sure he'd heard someone in the backroom of that office area. He snorted.

'Probably watching porn and eating Cheesy Toes or something. Fucking wanker."

Smiling to himself, Nny wandered over to his bag, sat on the bed and started shuffling through its contents. He pulled everything out, his tools, some old comics by Andreyko and Wayshak, a relatively new toothbrush, some clothes and his more comfortable boots. He stayed up that night, cleaning his knives and flipping through one book at a time. When morning came, Johnny had repacked everything and was on his way out the door, his bag tucked safely in a hole he'd carved into the box spring of the bed. He drove his car around back and left it there, intending to walk to the clinic, a small ash grey satchel carrying the only things he thought he might need.

Happy Times ran almost an entire street, forking off in several directions. Nny remembered that the alleyway behind it had been big enough to fit a couple of small vans, plenty of room to drive to the side entrance and probably park there, alongside the door. He continued down Fifth street, following Happy Times until he saw a large, metal garage door that an idle delivery truck was parked in front of. He crossed the street, walking up to the building's back entrance just as the metal gate went up to let the truck inside.

No one noticed him as he entered, no one paid him any mind as he walked by people unloading crates of grade D meat and frozen foods. The unloading room was huge, the proverbial ass of the building, no second or third floor here. It was a straight shot to the ceiling of the structure. People rushed by him, packing up trash and dumping it in large bins to be carried outside. Johnny watched the workers buzz around like . . .

_. . . flies in a jar . . ._

"_Get the hell away from me you demon of a child . . ."_

Johnny shook his head to clear it. He closed his eyes to focus on the noise around him, trying to distract himself from thinking about Todd, about the little boy he'd left behind, on his own. He tried not to feel guilty, tried not to wonder what might be happening to the kid now.

"_I just want my life back" His father, standing in the doorway just staring angrily at the floor._

"_Do you think if I ignore you, you'll just disappear? I think you will . . ."_

"_I want to run away sometimes, I just think that since we had you, nothing's been the same."_

"_I think you'll just vanish," His mother, staring at the ceiling. She twirled her hand in the air, like she was waving away smoke, "Just like that and then you're gone."_

When he opened his eyes he realized that there were significantly less people around him, in fact everyone was leaving. All of the crates were neatly arranged against the far right wall, all of the meat and food had been put in a freezer near the front of the room, and all of the machines had been turned off.

Eventually everyone was gone, the last one out was the only one to look at him, the older man motioned to him and shouted that he'd leave the exit door beside the main gate propped open because it automatically locked inside and out when it shut. He pushed a brick between the door and wall, and flicked the switch to cut the main power.

The lights went out, the only thing he could see now was illuminated by the tiny streak of sunlight from the propped door about a hundred feet behind him.

X

_"You can pray all you want, to whatever God you think will listen and it still makes __**no**__ difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you, and you know that if it ever did relent . . . it would not be because it cared."_

_So, as the system rages and cleans the waste made by a complex, and irrelevant, species you make connections you did not see before. You begin to realize that somewhere deep down you__** are**__ the system. You are the intricate piece left to funnel out the mess around you. _

_But then you are the __**sickness**__ as well. Because as inhuman as you might feel at times you know that at some point __**you**__ were one of the organisms making a mess, instead of the machine they turned you into so that you might clean it._

_Solutions are always derived from the problem._

X

End Chapter Six

Are you confused?


	7. Uninterrupted

Anonymous review replies: (forgot to put it in earlier)

Kyd Chaos: Well, I don't know if Vasquez himself would read any sort of fanfiction. I think Id have a heart attack if he did read my story, but I get what you mean and thank you. My Dad nearly gave me a panic attack when he said he met Vasquez at Comicon last year, gave him the link to my stories and Jhonen said he'd read them. When I nearly cried in embarrassment he said he was joking. I got him back later though, I got him real good. He really did meet him at Comicon, as I have an autographed copy of the Squee book, but he didn't give him the link, of which I'm glad. I've seen videos of Jhonen cutting people and their fan works down to size and I don't want that to happen to me.

MissMarientose: Thank you so much! I'd love to see these drawings of yours, no one has ever said these stories have inspired artwork and as an artist myself I am intrigued. I'd love to see your interpretation of this! And thank you for the song rec, I'm always looking for more music to help me get in the writing mood. If you have anymore I'd love to hear them.

"Some things I've learned since I have grown, the house I'm in is not a home."

~Todd Casil, age 15

Spiderfly

Chapter Seven

Uninterrupted

Footsteps, stair steps, baby steps, long steps, quick steps, my steps, these steps, your steps . . .

Johnny walked towards the security clearance door down a circular hallway at the opposite end of the storage area. A man, only visible through the glow of several monitors, was seated in the small fenced–in glass box. As he came closer the guard looked up at him and nodded. The buzz of the security clearance over the thick metal door rang loud throughout the enormous room.

Nny smiled and gave the distracted man a tiny wave as he walked through clearly mistaken as one of the early morning workers who had already left. On the other side of the door was a long narrow hallway that ended in several forks that twisted and turned in every which direction like the long tendrils of a monster, occasionally punctuated by an odd door colored in bright hues with flowers and rainbows. He walked for quite awhile, occasionally going in a direction that led to nowhere and having to turn back.

Johnny stopped at a baby blue door with six flowers on it, each daisy having five yellow petals and a single red one. He saw no other sign and when he opened the door, inside were six bright red tables with five yellow chairs each. He closed the door and continued on. The next one he came to, the final door before the hall made an abrupt ninety degree turn, was green with a big yellow smiley face in the center. When he looked in he saw several children sitting in chairs staring up at an old television blasting a kiddie show and occasionally static. One of them was sitting on a toddler's highchair and was being spoon fed a bowel of white mush by an elderly woman in a green apron.

The highchair child turned at the sound of the door squeaking open and looked at him, the moment their eyes met the kid started making odd choking noises, its mouth wide open. Johnny couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. The only thing it wore were grey scrubs and white socks, most of the hair on its head was gone as well.

"Ahhhhhhn . . ." was called out to him, the old woman popped another spoonful of mush into its mouth.

Right then another, much younger, woman in a green apron appeared in the doorway in front of him effectively blocking his view of the children inside. She eyed him questioningly and put her hand on the doorknob.

"Wrong room." He said as he closed it himself. There was a clicking sound as the door was locked from the inside. He turned down the new part of the hallway passing many more doors with strange, child like drawings on the front. Nny never saw the same design on any two doors as he ventured deeper and deeper into the very large building. Every now and then a door would slam in the distance but he came across no one as he wandered from one place to another.

X

_Waking up in one of the empty rooms on a testing day made it a bad day. There were only a few things you could do, you could stay there for a few hours, you could try to find your way back to the main waiting area for patients or you could try to leave the building out the back. _

_Todd knew it was a trap. Behind some of the doors people were waiting to drag you back to the doctors, waiting to see it you could remember where they would hide. _

_He ran in and out of rooms, trying to count flower petals and not stay in one place too long. Just one more test and he'd never have to come back._

X

Another door with flowers again, this time they were daisies with seven petals, three pink and four red. Johnny tried the handle but the room was dark inside. There was no switch that he could feel on the wall.

-

_It's just a test, it's just a test . . ._

-

He walked further down the hall, noticing more and more cameras as he went.

-

_Don't get caught, keep moving, if you can't decide between left or right then take the one that looks like a longer run . . ._

-

Another door, more flowers, a smiley face, a laughing sun, singing birds with blue feathers, _keep running . . ._

Red, blue, pink, yellow, gre_en, purple, orange and brown . . ._

_Two red petals turn left, three red petals turn right, left, right, right, one red petal turn left . . ._

_Avoid faces, avoid animals, plants are sanctuary, sunlight is surrender. Monsters hide in dark places so avoid purple, brown and blue . . . there were rules to follow . . . every patient knows them . . ._

Johnny stared at a purple door with another smiley face on it. He couldn't hear anything inside but he could see a light shining from under the door . . . _avoid faces, avoid people, people could go either way . . . you don't know what's inside of people, it could be temporary sanctum or something bad . . . _He continued down the hall, passing door after door.

_Back door . . . ask politely to be let out and you go free, don't scream . . . just ask to leave and the man will let you out._

"_This door locks inside and out when closed . . ."_

Locked in a cold storage room until the morning, there is no way out.

_Just ask nicely and he'll let you out . . ._

No one escapes . . . no exceptions . . .

X

". . . his steps, her steps, run through the door and take your last steps . . ."

Leslie was sitting in the middle of the hallway in front of him. Johnny walked forward slowly, one hand behind his back and the other on his bag. She stared at her own feet folded under her.

"Did you hurt your arm?" She looked up at him, her right arm cradled to her chest. Johnny motioned to it, "When you fell, did you hurt your arm?"

"I didn't fall, I just can't play this game anymore. You can't play chess with broken bishops."

"I had a friend who used to play chess with rocks and sticks." Her face was hidden in her hair and her grey scrubs were dirty and dusty but not torn or ripped.

"How does he play now?" He saw her make eye contact. Big brown eyes . . .

"He doesn't." They stayed that way for a moment, just looking at each other when in the distance behind Leslie a door slammed. She turned to look, messy and matted blonde hair hardly moving around her head.

"Footsteps ringing through the halls of a dead place waking up in thralls, monsters crawling on the walls like spiders shrieking welcome calls . . ."

"I think someone's coming."

"I think you've been here before." She stood and dusted her pants off. Nny noticed that as she walked towards a yellow door with more daisies on the front she limped a little. He could hear them even more clearly now, footsteps coming down the hall. When he turned Leslie was motioning to him from inside the dark daisy room. He followed her in and closed the door behind them.

Johnny couldn't tell if the room was very big or not, and when he asked her, Leslie said there was just enough room to hide by the door. They were both on either side of it, staring at the light shining in from the bottom.

"At night they turn all the hall lights off, so sometimes it's best to find your way back before then. Unless you don't mind sleeping on the floor or not eating. They don't look in the flower rooms. These are your sanctuary."

"They let you stay out at night?"

"Only if you're in this half of the building." He couldn't see her at all, but her voice rang out clearly from in front of him. The footsteps were still echoing loudly down the hall, but they weren't close enough to warrant worry over how loud they were being.

"Do you know who's coming right now?"

"No."

They waited for a moment as the person outside continued towards them before Leslie spoke again.

"Why did you come back here? And who are you?"

"I didn't come _back_ from anywhere."

"You wouldn't have made it this far if you didn't know the way."

_Clack clack clack clack clack_

They both went still as the obviously high heeled shoes passed them by. Leslie didn't make a sound until several minutes after they'd gone. When she sighed Johnny crawled forward on his hands and knees to grab the door handle.

_Tiny hands testing the door, seeing nothing but dark in the hallway. He'd been in there too long, he'd have to find his way back in the dark._

"You should go back, the nurses will come looking for stragglers soon. If you don't want to get caught you should go."

"I never get caught." He said as he cracked the door to peek outside. The hallway was empty again, and sticking his head out to look the other way he noted that the woman who'd passed was gone as well. He stood and opened the door to let some light in, seeing that the room was indeed very small. "So plant rooms are safety."

"Flower rooms now. They painted over the trees. It's just the floral stuff that's left." He could see her silhouette in the corner of the room. She stared at his feet, "You must have been here a very long time ago to remember it that way."

"What do you know of a Dr. Manning?" She didn't move, didn't even seem to breathe as he watched her.

"He treated my mom, treated a lot of our moms."

"Is he still here?"

"They forced him to retire after they found out about him giving illegal prescriptions to people who shouldn't have had them."

"_They're mine!"_

"You wouldn't happen to know how I can find him, would you?"

"How do you know Dr. Manning?"

"_You're always a slave to something."_

He couldn't remember exactly where he'd heard of him. During his last visit perhaps . . .

"Someone mentioned him the last time I was here."

"Ah, so you have been here before." Johnny made an irritated noise and moved to leave the room, just as he was about to slip through the door Leslie grabbed his elbow. "They said he was sick."

"And?"

"Sick doctors make sick patients," she released his arm, "and sick children for that matter. Did you know you have a better chance of having a mental illness if one or both of your parents have one? I didn't know that before I spoke with Dr. Manning a few years ago. He used to visit us before Dr. Herring banned him from the property. Here comes Nancy, give it a minute or two before you go, alright?" She left the room just as a nurse walked up and was lead away. He waited a little while longer on her insistence before disappearing down the hall in the other direction.

X

He decided to come back that night.

Finding his way to the security guard had been easy enough. The distant man buzzed him through without even a glance. It would seem that no one cared if someone wandered from the hallway and into the storage area as long as the service door remained locked. As he crossed the room he could see that thin ray of light shining against a distant wall, he rounded a corner and there it was, still open and still accessible.

When he reached the door he pulled it open and studied the lock. Nny figured it would be easy enough to jam. He pulled several tools from his bag along with a small scrap of metal and hammered it in place. He tested the door and was pleased with himself when it opened easily.

The sun would be setting soon, he'd been in those stupid hallways for hours just walking around. How he'd managed to get as far as he had was a mystery even to him. Would he be able to find his way in the dark?

There was the side door as well, it would probably be a better way to go through and was a lot closer to the nurse's station where records were held.

He'd already fixed the back door though. Oh well, maybe Leslie would use it as a way out. At least she wouldn't get stuck in that enormous storage room, at least for her it wouldn't all be a trap.

_Running through an inky blackness. Tripping over metal things and cutting his legs. Todd felt along the walls for hours until he felt the cold handle of a doorknob. Hope and happiness swelled up inside of him, his tiny hands pulled on it only to get nothing. The door was locked. Dr. Herring had lied._

'_It's only a test, if you get outside you'll never have to come back.'_

_Todd screamed and cried, he wanted to see his parents again. He wanted out of this place._

_They found him the next morning with a twisted ankle. After that Dr. Manning refused to allow Todd Casil to participate in Dr. Herring's maze experiment any longer._

X

Johnny's finger traced over the room key in his pocket. The sun was still sitting above the horizon and a low, howling wind had started up again. There were very few cars on the road surprisingly, and an even smaller number of people wandering the streets. By the time he made it to the run down hotel it had gotten just dark enough that Nny noticed the light that had been on yesterday in the office area had been turned off. There were still no signs of a car or desk manager.

He hopped over the small gate that blocked any incoming cars and was suddenly very glad he moved his around back. The heavy padlock looked too thick to cut through with anything he'd brought along with him. Johnny stepped over the small bar gate and walked back to his room to wait until night came.

X

"Something's reaching out to you, something in your eyes," Leslie's crayons moved across the paper Nancy had provided her with, "Is stealing wisdom from your head and filling holes with lies." Her nurse passed her by, glancing at the paper the thirteen year old was coloring on.

"What are you drawing, Les?"

"They said you were a sweet boy but all I see is wrong. When all that sweetness is used up you'll sing an empty song." She continued singing and the nurse walked away. "You'll sing of dying butterflies, of bugs and crocodiles." She was sitting in the main recreational area for Happy Times patients with her meager art supplies just playing. Other patients were sprawled around the white washed room staring at the television or leafing through tattered magazines. The table she was set up was in the back of the room, farthest from the door. A young boy was sitting across from her playing with his own crayons and paper. As if feeling the weight of her eyes on his face, the boy looked up.

"You'll sing of empty towns and streets that run for empty miles." Leslie sang on, staring straight into the eyes of someone who suffered from epileptic delusions and panic attacks. "They said you were a smart boy but all I see is hell. When all that smartness is used up you'll be an empty shell." The boy, whose name was Jaden, tightened his grip on his bottle-rocket blue crayon. "A shadow of your former self, no person left to blame. Silhouette sewn in through the hide of a monster looking tame." Her voice dropped down to a whisper as she held his eyes, silently daring him to look away.

"Something's reaching out to you, something in your skin, is taking all that's left of you and **eating** it again."

Later that evening just as everyone had been put to bed, Leslie watched from her door as they practically dragged Jaden to the solitary ward screaming. Nurse Nancy watched as well, from her post across the hall. She looked over at Leslie, once the spectacle had disappeared through the security doors, with an old question in her eyes. The young patient gave a little shrug and slipped back inside, the sound of her door closing echoed loudly to the other children in their rooms.

X

_I can't help but wonder what's more ridiculous, the idea of obsessing over the meager attention we get from our chosen audience or the fact that we're fixated on them at all. They don't care, and they won't notice when you're gone. When __we're__ gone._

End Chapter Seven

A/N: A little look into who Leslie really is. The Monster Poem is the song she was singing.

But before you go . . . review please


	8. Otherside

Anonymous Review Replies;

MissMarientose- That's too bad, if there is ever an opportunity for you to show them I'd be happy to see. Otherwise thank you for your kind reviews throughout the progression of this story. I'm glad you enjoy reading it. And the title comes from the famous poem by Mary Howitt.

Hannah- I guess for Leslie it's just that she doesn't have much of a choice. She just gives up running around like the other kids but does have a bit of a reputation with them. Some things about her are in here as well.

!X-Time for the show everybody-X!

"My boy, take a good look at yourself. You're a monster."

Spiderfly

Chapter Eight

He couldn't remember anything.

Lying on the bed of his empty hotel room Johnny once again came to the conclusion that he'd been dropped into this world by space aliens. There was no other explanation. He couldn't remember anything about himself from before the Wall besides the fact that he _had_ existed prior to it.

Nny pushed himself up and stared at the neatly packed bag lying on the very far edge of the mattress. He'd taken his time, methodically placing everything in so it would fit and not make too much noise. All of his belongings, his tools, his very precious things were in there.

His diary was as well, he hadn't really looked at the thing since that first night of driving. The general shape of it was easy to see through the material of his bag and for a moment he wanted to open it and start writing about all of the things he'd seen and heard, the interesting and not so interesting people he'd met.

_Reaching for the only escape from his home, his life, his parents. Todd hugged Shmee close as he drew and drew in scratchy pictures with ball point pens, page after page of random thoughts drifting . . ._

_Squee stared at the drawing he'd just hung up. Johnny would be so proud when he saw the wonderful picture he'd made for him. He'd gotten so much better, he wanted to thank his neighbor for being his only true friend by giving him something special, something straight from his heart and mind. Squee sat for hours in that basement room drawing, painting, and just waiting for Nny to come back home . . ._

Johnny questioned who he was really writing for, was it himself?

He looked at the time and realized that writing would have to wait. He had to get to Happy Times Correctional Facility and do some digging now that it was dark enough.

_Johnny . . . Johnny . . . nny C . . ._

It was cold, so very cold as he stepped out of the room, leaving the key in the lock because he knew he probably wouldn't be back. Shiny metal in the dark but there was no one there to see it and he wondered why. Why was the hotel empty? Why had the light been on but no one had been there on his first night? Why did it feel like everyone in this Graphite City was only a husk dancing on some errant wind meant for somewhere else? If they died, like that child's mother, like red haired women knocking on his door and parents grieving and groveling in his basements over the belief that their kids needed them, would it really matter that he'd been the one to do it? Would it matter that he'd ended their lives instead of some idiotic action of their own doing.

_. . . again, again . . . that moment always in my eyes . . ._

If their supposed 'needy children' suffered because of their death, would they assume it wasn't their fault? That they hadn't suffered already?

_. . . etched in there over and over . . . again, again . . ._

Stupid mistakes, wandering offspring-so little in such a very large world.

There was no contrast that he could see in this graying world around him, all good is bad and all bad is justifiable.

He let go of the key and watched the plastic tag labeled with a big number four dangle in that errant breeze, witness to whatever monster had devoured the hotel's watchman. Deaf dumb and blind but a present witness nonetheless. Nny's fingers toyed with the large charm before he turned away from the main street to head around the chip-bricked building towards the back where his car was parked. More graffiti smiled, smirked and cursed at him as he passed, the moonlit sky lighting up white faces like chalk on a black board. Nny's hand grazed those grinning mouths as he walked while the other held the strap of the bag on his shoulder. The area behind the hotel was full of trash and weeds that tangled around his legs, making it hard to move, soda cans, cigarette buds and construction work supplies of wire and pipes were scattered around the small lot that had over the years become saturated with local growth. Most likely Nature's way of trying to steal back whatever land it could while the space was free of concrete and \pavement. Other lemon cars were scattered in the general area, gently rusting in the seasons as the years passed like eons in the Sketch-lined City. His clunker blended in quite nicely amongst the tattered remains of the hottest cars from the early eighties.

Johnny had no trouble getting out of the lot and onto the street. Happy Times was not an emergency clinic so he could safely assume that most of the staff had already gone home. Parking right up to the rear entrance's large metal delivery door wouldn't be a problem unless he didn't make it out before the sun came up.

He knew he wouldn't be able to make it to the nurse's station from the maze halls what with the patient area being blocked off by a floor to ceiling fence from the treatment quarter that included where the nurses gossiped. Nny sat in his car and wondered if he should pull out and drive around to the other alley way and park in there or somewhere nearby without that cop from the other day recognizing his car. Taking the key out of the ignition, Johnny got out to see if the other end of the alleyway opened up somewhere nearby. The driveway for the delivery area L-shaped with a wall that was separate from the next building. When he walked along the wall to check he was happy to notice that there was enough space in between for a small gate and a set of stairs leading down to the area behind and along Happy Times.

_Come to the otherside, cast a boat . . . take a ride . . . cross the rift to the otherside . . . further . . . further . . ._

The hinges creaked and his footsteps echoed in the deep crevice of Happy Times and its neighbor Barley's Restaurant and Grill. A light near the bottom of the stairs buzzed faintly as it offered a dirty yellow glow for him to see by. The narrow corridor Nny followed continued past a backdoor to Barleys, and a small trash can that looked as if it was very rarely cleaned out, until he finally hit the wide girth of the main alleyway with enough room for the trash collectors to come in with their trucks from the various businesses in the immediate area before turning out of the three pronged dirt road onto the main one with no trouble. He wasn't surprised that they'd needed a sign for the delivery trucks at the mouth of it, even he'd been sure that it would have been wide enough all the way through to the other side.

The thin and worn strap of his bag began to dig painfully into his shoulders. He moved past the starlit path that lead to the open street and slipped into the scarcely lit and shadow filled passageway towards his destination, Happy Times side entrance to find the answers he'd been asking after for so long.

The flickering and yellow bulbs hissed at him like wet candlewicks as he drew nearer and nearer to the bright green door.

_Hands reaching, small hands grabbing up at the shiny door handle. His mother's presence behind him . . ._

It would be locked, he'd have to pick the lock with one of his tools he was sure.

_Todd reached up, his hands grazing ice cold metal in the icky glow of the lamps . . ._

Johnny pulled himself away, knowing it would be locked and deciding the best thing would be to get his stuff ready instead of stupidly jerking on the handle. His hand began riffling through his bag when he heard the click of the door opening.

X

"Hey Nancy, where are you going after your shift is done?" She was one of the more experienced nurses, having worked at the clinic for almost 22 years. She started leafing through Dr Herring's most recent notes to her on Leslie's behavioral problems.

"Well Dominic, unlike you and that insane psycho path you call a girlfriend, I'm going home to sleep. I can't believe that those clubs you go to stay open this late, it's almost two!"

_. . . it is my firm belief that if Leslie were treated like a normal child that she . . . diagnosed as a schizophrenic by myself and several other . . . right medication . . ._

She felt the man's head on her shoulder and heaved a sigh. He laughed, patting her arm as if she were his mother before leaning over more fully to read what the Doctor had written about the hospital's 'Problem Child'.

"You'd think after sixteen cases at this hospital he'd come up with something a little more helpful and interesting than Schizophrenia." Nancy nodded with a little laugh, her chair pushed into its best position at her station. She, Nic and Hannah were the nurses on duty that night. Dominic was beside her at the main nurse's station while his beloved bride-to-be was at the smaller post in the children's dorm.

"I think it's a wide enough net to catch most mental illnesses in _his_ book." He looked up from filing as she moved to exit her chair, paperwork to be copied in her hand. "Some of the disorders are treated with the same medication, he's so hopeless when it comes to therapy. This maze idiocy should have been enough to get his license revoked."

"Letting little kids run around in a dark storage room, I'm surprised none of them have seriously hurt themselves." Nancy took a look around the entrance to Happy Times with a nod. Nic began re-alphabetizing one of their graying cabinets, knowing none of the day staff had the time to put proper files in the proper order.

"Actually, awhile back one did."

He looked up but Nancy had already walked off to make her copies. He could hear the clicking of her stiff high heeled shoes on the linoleum floor, a familiar and slightly comforting rhythm in that filled the silence around him for several minutes before it too succumbed to the sleepy quiet of Happy Times after hours. Dominic paused in his work, dreaming of staying over at Hannah's for the night. He imagined pulling her close and doing all those wonderful things she never felt comfortable enough to do at his place. Lifting her by the thighs and setting her on the kitchen counter or carrying her into the nearest piece of furniture . . .

As if directed by his thoughts, Dominic's eyes drifted towards the gate. Hannah was posted near the dormitories to watch the kids while they manned the front desk. Shadows dancing outside of the protective ring of light above him kept him from clearly seeing the doorway and yet even so he could tell that something wasn't right about what he was seeing. A figure was standing in the dark open area of the main patient lobby. Nic reached up to grab the silver shade of the over head lamp and directed the light towards the shadow.

"What the-? Leslie! What are you doing out of bed?" The small blonde girl walked up the gate and leaned casually against it, her arms dangling unceremoniously through the bars. "Where's Hannah?" Those big brown eyes looked up at him and the heat from the lamp made his skin sweat. Leslie shrugged.

"She was sleeping when I came out."

"Well, why didn't you wake her?"

"She looked tired." Nic sighed and shook his head. He'd be damned if Nancy came back and filed a report against his girlfriend for sleeping, it would be for the best if he took her back himself.

"Come on, let's get you to bed." He grabbed a set of keys and walked around the main desk, letting the lampshade drop as he did so. In the swinging light Leslie's eyes trained themselves on that distant hallway, towards the treatment area where there were no lights and where no obvious noises could be heard. She watched all the way up until the male nurse blocked her view as he unlocked the main gate, the security alarm buzzing him through. She stepped back to let him pass as he walked inside and then locked the door behind him. "You know better than to wander around after dark, Leslie. If Dr. Herring found out you pulled a stunt like this . . ." The threat hung heavy in the air as he led her away.

-

"Letting little kids run around in a dark storage room, I'm surprised none of them have seriously hurt themselves." Nancy's eyes were flooded with memories of a young boy quivering and shaking in the shadow of a large machine. His knees had been cut up, his ankle swollen . . .

"Actually, awhile back one did." _Those big round eyes shining up at her and the other nurses. Coaxing him as one would a wild and injured animal back to the treatment room, cleaning up his blood, sweat, and tears._ She could remember seeing the damage and hating the new doctor, hating the experimental treatment and most of all hating the parents who'd signed the consent form.

She was walking before she knew it, down the hallway and towards the copy room. The Nurse's Station was equipped with a _state of the art_ scanner from the late eighties that hadn't worked in years so going back and forth between the front desk and the copy room was normal and Nancy didn't mind the opportunity to stretch her legs a bit. There was a wonderful stillness to Happy Times when it was shut down that made her really like working the later shifts. After years of her service it was really a small favor to ask of Dr. Herring.

Only small, yellow nightlights along the baseboards of the hallway were lit and all of the doors she passed had been locked hours ago by Milo the janitor, and longest standing employee of Happy Times. Milo Jerrad had also been one of the first patients the treatment facility had ever accepted, back when there were maybe only three kinds of crazy. He was old, in his seventies as far as Nancy knew and for as long as she'd been there he'd worked as the night and day custodian. As far as he was concerned Happy Times Correctional Facility was the only home he'd ever really known. There was talk that back in the day he'd been one of the male nurses before accepting the position as janitor. Why he'd take the pay cut became more and more obvious to the entire staff as their own jobs went on day by day.

It was very apparent to Nancy why he'd quit, hell there were days she'd seriously considered just turning in her two weeks and being done with the whole place. One look at Leslie, however and the veteran nurse would promise herself retirement after this one case was finished. Too many children left the facility only to be moved to the one for adults for her to let this particular case go without knowing the ending of that story.

Doors slid by, being passed without a second glance as she rounded a slight corner and reached the doors at the end of the main hallway. A light was on in the distance, brightening her way through the white washed back halls of the treatment area of the hospital. A few doors down from the copy room one was propped wide open by Milo's janitorial cart. The bright light came from the room he was working on, gathering trash if what she was hearing was any indication. A part of her wanted to pop in to say hello but an even larger part of her thought that that was just silly.

Years ago she might have told anyone who asked her that she worked at Happy Times because she wanted to help children or that it had always been a dream of hers. As time goes on and on those reasons change, she changed. Nancy realized that as a nurse she didn't really have a say in what happened to the children. They were not _her_ patients, _SHE_ was just the HELP and had no right to question the ones in control. And Leslie, her Leslie, the one brought in years ago by Dr. Manning and her junkie of a mother, the one signed over to the hospital and Dr. Herring's care . . .

She slowly, almost mechanically began to copy the papers she needed. Place paper face down, close lid, press button, open lid, take the copy, place paper face down, close lid . . . and yet despite the contemplative calm that was governing her body as if she were some sort of marionette dancing on strings her mind was racing. What would happen to Leslie?

'_What's going to happen to this boy?' Nancy thought as she carried the terrified child in her arms. She and the other nurses passed Dr. Manning just as he was gathering the last of his belongings from his office. Dr. Herring, the new head doctor replacing Gabriel Manning, wanted to contact some people about keeping the boy there full time, about making T-zzshAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAht- permanent resident. _

Thankfully the boy's parents had skipped town for whatever reason. Whoever he was, wherever he'd gone, he was one of the lucky ones.

-

Milo Jerrad gathered what he could of his trash bags and headed out towards the side entrance to unload it in the nearby dumpster. There were others who came in to clean the 'hospital'; they didn't expect him to maintain it alone. He just gathered the bins and dumped them, cleaned the windows and would even dust if he had the supplies for it. It took more time that it might sound to do only that and not much extra. A lot of Dr. Herring's employees cleaned up their stations when they were done so it was never a real issue to do a little upkeep around the two story building.

Sessions, if he remembered correctly, with a doctor were on the second floor while ordinary check up-rooms were here on the first. Dr. Herring's office was upstairs almost directly across from the main lobby and the other, mostly part-time doctors spread out in a two room per person fashion. The first and main room being their office and the second their own therapy room filled with the supplies they needed depending on their patients and their patient's problems. Doctors came and went, bringing in some of the strangest recovery equipment he'd ever seen and taking it with them when they left. Dr. Herring seemed to be the longest standing doctor besides Dr. Manning before him. Gabriel Manning and Anthony Herring had never agreed on what could treat mental illness and unlike Manning, Herring had friends in high places.

The bags of garbage were never very heavy and anything that needed to be disposed of in a particular manner was taken care of by the nurses. Nowhere else would hire him because of his disability so he considered his not-too difficult job quite the blessing.

He propped the back door open with a cinderblock that was always off to the side and trudged with his five bags towards the dumpster. A cool breeze shocked him and his fingers flexed out of impulse. Several of his bags dropped from his hand and crashed to the floor, one of them busting open to scatter papers to that gentle wind. When he turned around a glint of silver near the floor caught his eye. He traced it up a skinny leg, along a bony arm and up to a pair of eyes he thought and hoped he'd never have to see again. This was one of Dr. Manning's cases, from so very long ago.

_The resemblance was uncanny. The boy had Gabriel's nose, his hands, same skin and eyes . . ._

More pages flew through the night air, stark white in the grayish yellow of the lamps above the door. Milo watched in something akin to horror as that bony arm moved to grab the door handle and that skinny leg kicked the cinderblock out of the way effectively locking him out of the building and leaving him in that cold and dark alleyway alone.

Same eye color too, as both Gabriel and Leslie. 'Tribute to the days when you thought you could fly through life without a care in the world. Do you still live with those regrets Gabe? I can remember a time when you did all you could to help but it wasn't enough was it?' He could remember walking into the man's office one night a long time ago to see the Good Doctor sitting at his desk staring at a mess of cotton and fur on the floor in the center of the room. It was late and everyone else had left. He'd told Milo something he'd never forget or understand until he met Leslie and her mother.

"_Sick doctors make sick patients."_ Milo at the time had thought he was speaking of Dr. Herring and his new and very controversial treatment that Gabe's patient had been injured in. He, at the time had yet to see the boy and only did when the nurses finally released him back to his parents. Pity was never something he'd ever felt for Manning, respect but never pity.

And then he saw _Him_ and _Her_. _He_ was first, a young and very weak child with an illness Manning easily diagnosed as Paranoid Personality Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. _She_ came much later, when her mother was around nineteen and living on the streets because she wasn't _enough_ of a mental case to warrant help from the government for adult treatment but _was_ enough of one to get herself fired from any job she attempted to keep after leaving Happy Times at the age of seventeen. Her baby Leslie stayed at the Correctional Facility while her momma wandered around town looking for handouts.

So Manning had been speaking of Herring and himself. Unsurprising as Anthony had always loved watching children crawl through the maze like mice in a trap while Gabriel had a weakness for women who were unstable.

-

_Clack . . . clack . . . clack . . . clack_

Slow footsteps echoed in shrewdly from the doorway behind her. Nancy turned and stared through the door at the hall, a chill running down the nape of her neck. A strange smell drifted in as the footfalls became louder and louder, strange like metal scraping linoleum flooring, strange like dying.

Her stomach churned but as the head nurse on duty she had to find out what was going on. She knew exactly what Milo sounded like when he shuffled through building at night and what she was hearing wasn't him walking towards the room she was in. The printer chimed and her last copy was churned out for her. As she gathered her papers she decided that it would probably not be a good idea to address a possible stranger alone. Every room in the facility had a phone that could connect directly with the one at the nurse's station and she could use it to get Dominic to come down, maybe even have him call on some sort of security out to the clinic. If the nights weren't so quiet then maybe her boss would actually fork out the cash for guards to stick around longer than a few weeks for one lousy paycheck and a half.

Her own shoes were suddenly too noisy as she crossed the room to reach the phone. They were so noisy in fact that she suddenly realized the clacking of footsteps in the hallway had stopped. Nancy's hand paused in midair only a few inches away from the cordless wall-set when she had the sudden notion that perhaps she'd startled whoever it was into stopping. She prayed and prayed that they'd get scared and that she'd hear the sound of running in the opposite direction. Every nerve in her body was calling for her to run, like some sort of internal buzzer blaring an alarm because nothing was safe anymore.

Some part of her, some animalistic instinct told her that it would happen. For every clichéd Hollywood horror film churned out depicting the death of some poor unfortunate soul trapped in a room, nothing compares to the fear of realizing that you should have run while you had the chance. Preferably before you had the brilliant notion to turn your back to an open door.

Nancy hoped and prayed that the room would be empty save of her, that when she looked over she'd have a panic attack for working herself up over nothing, that it would be Milo waving goodnight as he finished his shift, that Hannah would be standing having already changed into her party shoes and 'didn't you realize it was already three o'clock? Nancy you work yourself to death I swear . . .'

The light's buzzing was shrill in her ears until she heard it, the deafeningly sharp scuffle of that metal on the floor. Dead silence dropped like a heavy blanket on her head, her hand still out she turned her head to see the dark shadow of another person stretching across the floor towards her. The more she turned the more stiff her body became and the harder it was to force herself not to freak out. No Milo or Hannah stood behind her, _it _was more like a skeleton wrapped in shadows and smoke from the alley out back. In all her years she never thought that she'd see something so familiar and monstrous stand before her.

_He_ didn't say anything, just stood with an awful expression on his face. Nancy knew any small part of _Him_ that she might have seen years ago wasn't standing in the doorway. That the illness had run rampant and was now the puppet master of that poor boy's broken mind. Observing, he was observing her curiously. Those eyes just inspected her with a disassociation that made some part of her feel like prey locked in a cage with a predator not after you for any other reason than it was in its nature to destroy. He would derive no satisfaction from it but the act of killing her would happen regardless. And she knew she was going to die, deep down. The primal workings of her weak human body told her so.

_You are dead!_

Screamed her cells. Shock fills the empty spaces inside with lead but fear weighs on the heart and mind, they were warring inside of her and he was still watching like a scientist would watch an experiment. Studying her reaction to his presence _His_ eyes traveled along her arm and towards what she was reaching for. They snapped back to her face and his head moved as if daring her to do so.

She wasn't going to get away and she knew this but some part of her said to try. There was a stack of scissors in a cup on the table beside him and she knew he was aware of them. They had a whole silent conversation together and they understood what would happen but that didn't stop her from screaming when it did.

_He_ glanced away for a split second, his left hand twitched and she moved faster than she could ever remember. Her hand stupidly connected with the phone but as soon as her other one came up to turn on the speaker to call for help she was slammed away from it and into the adjacent wall. How those slight arms had the strength to push two pairs of scissors into her diaphragm, up into her lungs while simultaneously thrusting her so that her feet left the floor, boggled her mind for the split second after it happened.

"Aaaahhhh!" Raspy, her voice and she doubled over but his hands didn't leave the handles sticking out from somewhere below her breasts. _He_ was still studying her face, watching her reaction as if waiting for something to happen. Red pooled over his hands and down the front of her old fashioned white blouse and knee-length, wool-weave, grey skirt. Hannah wore scrubs, Dominic wore scrubs, but as head Nurse under Dr. Herring she wore something a little more flash. "For the new clients, a little professionalism" he'd insisted. She screamed again as he started to back away from her, only the barest tips of his fingers still touching the blue and green handles now. It was desperate and sounded like the howl from a dying animal.

_We failed you, all of us . . . we've . . ._

Nancy slid to the floor, weak and calling in guttural cries as that shadowed form turned off the light and closed the door behind him. _He_ left her in the dark, _He_ left her alone and dying in that copy room to fall and land on the scissors and scream and scream until her throat filled and pulsed over with blood. _He_ left her as so many others had abandoned _Him _that night and she wondered, as that final flicker of life left her, if maybe she deserved it.

X

End Chapter Eight

The original plan was for each installment of this trilogy to have eight chapters but as I've been adding more 'meat' so to speak to my writing that won't be possible for this last one. This is not the final chapter.

Thank you to the people who reviewed. I really appreciate the support and apologize for the late update. I've started school again and fell a little behind on this.

Please review for the next chapter. They really do encourage me to write in a more timely fashion and in fact keep me from procrastinating.


	9. Evil Pigments

Anonymous review replies:

MissMarientose- I'm glad you've enjoyed the journey~!

Desdemona Kakalose- I hope the ending isn't too confusing~! I was trying to imprint a certain idea into the trilogy but I think I overshot my goal and ended up transferring the idea directly onto my audience. In some ways it is a good thing but in others not so much. This collage-y style of writing works for this idea but it's hard for me to attempt people who are not quite as messed up as Johnny, such as Edgar, Devi, Tenna, and Tess. Jimmy's messed up in a different way so I just have to work on him. This is also why, during any attempt to write for a different character I'll often make them messed up in some way, shape or form. I get bored easily otherwise.

Name- I'm both horrified and somewhat, I guess the closest word is glad, that I could accurately portray that kind of experience. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Spiderfly

Chapter Nine

Smiling, he felt happy.

"You're not my child!" But the screaming, and the voices would never end. Echoing loudly through the halls were the cries of a very sickly child.

No life, said the computer screen sitting heavily on the table in his father's study. No life for me, No life for you. Smile everybody, you have no life!

Tires squealing on repeat, ripping his eardrums apart. So loud and he ran back into the alley, back into that place riddled with shadows and dark things that might eat him up, gobble him down like a monster would a snack. So very cold inside. Goodbye Mr. C-Acckkkkck! Long gone are the days we used to play but I hope we meet again someday. You can put the pieces of a broken bottle back together but it will never hold your sand properly again. The holes exist because some parts were smashed into tiny bits of dust that can't be taken back.

Nice to meet you ma'am, My name is To-ahhschtzZZZZZzohnny C. I'm not sure why I'm here anymore but let me tell you that the color red really complements the evil pigments in your eyes.

-

Johnny shut the door quietly behind himself and continued towards the front desk.

_I am the FIRST_

_A shadow at the end of the hallway_

There were some folders already hanging out of one of the filing cabinets, odd and no one else was manning the desk. Just like at the hotel it looked as if the person had been plucked right out of their station with no warning. Just gone . . . forever. He slowly approached the eerily empty area. The lamp above him was hot as he passed under it and the chairs took a 'just sat in' feel. As if the people sitting in them would be back at any moment. Just as he reached for the first file sitting innocently on the desk Nny noticed that his hands were still sticky and red.

The older woman had been easy to push, easy to scare. He wondered if she was still alive, lying there on the floor, stewing in her own juices or if maybe she'd drained enough to fade out. Maybe she was sitting on that agonizing edge, waiting for that final push but unable to just lean over and drop like a stone into oblivion.

God fuck he was feeling _way_ too poetic.

_I spin the carousel_

_The laughter recedes away_

He subconsciously started wiping the cherry-hued goo on his shirt and pants. His fingers faded pink and still left bloody prints when he started thumbing through random files and folders for anything that struck him as familiar. Nny felt that he just needed one tiny thread to follow, to explain how he knew things about the lifeless place he'd stumbled into. Anything to clarify . . .

Nothing called out to him, struck him or felt like anything more than meaningless drivel written by self-important fuck-tarts who needed a colonoscopy to make sure that they weren't talking out of their asses instead of their heads. Digging through the C sections of the filing cabinets didn't bring up anything from beyond five years back. He needed the older files.

_My finger on your lips_

_I stole something precious_

A door squeaked and Johnny stood up straight. His eyes immediately looked to the darkness of the patient area blockaded by the floor to ceiling security fence. He was standing in the light so focusing on the inky forum area was nearly impossible. Silence dragged on for a few moments before being broken by the slight jingle of keys. Nny backed out of the light of the lamp and drifted around towards the main gate, his eyes slowly adjusting to see vague shapes. If someone was there they had yet to react in a normal fashion to him.

One of the files on the nurse's desk behind him fell with a FWAP, garnering his attention for a brief moment. He turned to look and almost immediately the swinging door in the forum that led to the patient's dormitories banged against the wall as if thrown open in a rush. He waited for a scream, for the alarm to sound but instead all he could hear were the faint steps of someone limping down the hall towards the maze at the other end of the building. Walking back Johnny noted for the first time an open door, dark and on the wall adjacent to the nurse's station. Glancing briefly at the papers scattered among the chairs behind the main desk he slipped inside and flicked on the wall switch, bathing the room in a grainy old light. The walls were covered in floor to ceiling shelves stuffed with files that consisted of an older and yellower style of folder, making it blatantly clear that if he was going to find anything it would be in here.

_I am the SECOND_

_Alone in a faceless crowd_

T Bas

Z Bas

A Ber . . .

He skipped a few shelves over.

K Dol

M Don

. . . and stopped. When he doubled back he realized that the C's were on several of the higher shelves. Grabbing a small step ladder from a corner of the room Nny climbed up and continued searching.

_A human caught in monochrome dreams_

_I scream to wake up_

B Cae

D Car

T Cas

. . . and he stopped again, his arms still reaching for a higher shelf. He slowly lowered it.

T Cas

The first letter was wrong . . . J, not T like . . . but then what were the chances? The file looked old, it would belong to a Tommy Casey or Tara Caser or Timothy Castillo . . . When his fingers brushed the manila cardstock a sense of dread he couldn't possibly name came over him.

_My voice drowns_

_Deep underground_

T Cas not . . .

He pulled gently on it, swearing that if it in anyway stuck or took more than minimal effort to remove he would abandon the coincidence to probe a different shelf. It slipped out easily, fluidly and was heavy in his hand. The file was thick and on one of its flimsy corners was a small white sticky tab.

_T. Casil_

No . . . Taylor Casil, Tesla Casil, Terry Casil, Timmy Casil . . . in his distraction one of his boots slipped on the step and he came crashing down to the floor, the file's loose papers dropping in a flutter of forms and photographs.

"Mother fucker of Swedish plugs!" His left elbow had caught something on the way down and the throbbing made sharp sparks of pain race along his entire arm. Sitting up Johnny rubbed it carefully, his eyes closed. When he opened them the backside of a Polaroid stared up at him from between his legs.

_Only the dead can hear me_

_See me . . ._

-

Leslie made her way down the hall, Nic's keys jingling in her hand loosely. She couldn't run for too long, her damaged ankle keeping her from really getting anywhere too quickly. She had seen him in the main area of the building, had quietly slipped into the forum to leave the building but _He'd_ been there . . . covered in blood . . . by himself . . . no Nancy that she could see. No risks, she'd decided, and just like that as _He'd_ approached the gate _She'd_ slipped back out again. She had the highest level security keys with her. The back gate key had to be on it.

_He'd_ seemed kind of nice the last time _She'd_ met him but then Nancy had always been kind to her and _He_ had no problem doing something horrible to the head Nurse. No risks, no chances with the Casil kid.

Only not a kid, Nancy and Milo would tell stories, some of him, some of others. She knew that if he was ever a patient he had to be the one they spoke of when they mentioned Dr. Manning. A sick child turned very sickly adult. God it was like seeing Gabriel again. How she missed the sad and smiling doctor, and her mother.

She passed the breathing and screaming closet, Nic and Hannah's voices calling muffled cries that scared the other dorm rooms into silence. She limped quickly by, the keys jingling loudly as she did. The voices got louder, dull thuds of Nic's shoulder against the door but it wouldn't budge. There were sobs coming from behind her as the other children hoped it would be the last they'd ever see and hear of Leslie.

_Left . . . left . . . right . . .left . . . end of the hallway and another right . . . five petals left . . . two flowers right . . . count four smiley faces then turn left . . ._

Each step echoed loudly, the keys made a racket that was sure to wake the dead but this time there were no monsters waiting with baited breath behind happy faces and laughing animals. No bright colors to distract from the evil, no pretty pictures to deceive. She navigated the maze with an accuracy that would have made Dr. Herring proud were he not sleeping comfortably in his bed, made from the tears and terror of damaged children, uptown somewhere. Leslie barreled through a set of swinging doors and into a hall that forked into five different hallways. She knew the way . . . she knew the way . . .

_Second from the left straight down to a small set of stairs . . . take another right until you reach the doorway . . . _

When she got there the small window was dark and empty. The door keeper was gone. An agonizing silence dragged on until she noted a small black box on the adjoining wall with a red eye for card reading. She pulled two ugly blue neck tags from inside of her shirt and swiped one across the security panel. Nothing happened. She looked down, her eyes having long adjusted to the darkness and bleak lighting of the maze's hallways. The security eye glowed eerily at her and she grabbed Nic's tag this time and swiped again. There was a moment of silence before, sure enough, the guy was a high enough standing nurse to have security clearance. The door buzzed faintly before she heard the small alarm and click of it opening. She pushed through and almost immediately tripped on something lying on the floor. It was heavy and cold, covered in cloth. Leslie stood and waited for her eyes to adjust to this new, pitch black dark. There were no lights whatsoever in this room and she hesitantly made her way forward, hands stretched out in front of her. She hoped that she'd be able to find this exit that all of the other children talked about. The one that was supposed to be open. The one no one could ever find.

-

Johnny gathered up several other nearby photos. The face that stared up at him was both familiar and foreign. Squee looked up at him, stared distantly at the camera and away from it with large hollow eyes. The pictures were old, too old.

These weren't snapshots of a ghostly pale boy that lived next door to him. These weren't moments captured of an absurdly innocent child, uncorrupted by the world that Johnny so reviled. This wasn't the Todd he knew. The face matched though, the name tag on his shirt said he was in fact that tiny boy he'd been living next to for so long. Todd but not Squee. Not little Squeegee, just some kid with his face and name who mindlessly looked into cameras with eyes that were tortured and slightly wary. Eyes that were childlike in form but not function, eyes that said 'help me' and 'Get AWAY' with a single glance. The pictures were _so_ old . . .

He snatched the file off of the floor and flipped it open. Forms with blanks filled in with neat and careful hand writing were stacked and stapled on top of diagnosis reports made by the ever mentioned Gabriel Manning.

_. . . won't speak during sessions, three weeks since incident . . ._

_Paranoid Personality Disorder . . ._

_. . . Post traumatic stress syndrome . . . chronic insomnia . . . epileptic delusions and seizures . . ._

_. . . started him on thioridazine . . . anti-psychotics . . . vomits his medication . . . thinks the hospital is trying to poison him . . . common ideas stemming from his paranoia . . . _

Abruptly the handwriting changed and the dialogue shifted to a much more self important style. The subject matter also changed. He'd been taken off of the drugs given by Manning and started in an experimental treatment by Dr. Herring.

_I have started prepping him for the maze treatment. The patient has yet to fully participate in the program. Like many others he lacks motivation . . . instilled the idea that he can actually leave the building if he finishes the project . . ._

"They kept him here . . ." Johnny whispered to himself, ". . . for months."

_. . . subject's motivation has much improved . . ._ _already completed the project, though minor injuries were sustained, with great results and in record time . . ._

"Minor . . . injuries?"

_Fractured ankle,_ started a nurse's report, _busted kneecap . . . _

The list went on and on. Mr. Casil had been outraged along with his previous doctors. Dr. Manning and Mr. Casil filed a complaint against Herring. A counter lawsuit claimed that Dr. Manning was giving out prescriptions to Mrs. Casil and that Mr. Casil beat his son. He catalogued a number of bruises found on Todd's body that did _not_ come from his treatment.

Todd was withdrawn from the hospital by his mother and Dr. Manning resigned from his position. The family left no forwarding address for the hospital to use. Dr. Manning on the other hand, did.

Johnny slowly rose from his knees, his hands leaving long red smears on the floor as he gathered up the papers and stuffed them into Todd's file. He'd get some answers for his friend first, his own questions could wait.

-

_Mr. Casil's fingers were growing numb._

_No life . . . for me . . . for you . . . smile, you have no life . . ._

_Years of watching Todd grow into someone he could find no physical or emotional connection with. The boy was not his son._

_And yet he'd raised him, perhaps they were not related in blood but something else as he watched Todd sing a daunting song of Red Letters in the shadows of their basement. The smell of vomit was a common one in their household but never before had it been so overpowering. _

_Blood, my son . . . he has to be mine . . . isn't he?_

_Yes_

-

_Deterioration_

_I think something inside of me is gone._

_Johnny, why did they make me remember?_

_Locked in that closet for hours and hours, laughing outside . . . light and then nothing . . ._

_Hurt . . . I just want to forget._

_. . ._

_Are you there?_

Different, the man's office looked familiar, similar perhaps to the offices at the clinic . . . there was a desk and a chair, another one and an ugly rug . . .

The wood was cold but the lamp was hot, the man doubled over with his head resting on his arms was breathing deeply . . . Johnny sat down in the patient's chair across from him and waited for one second . . . two seconds . . . three seconds . . .

He kicked the desk. The man jumped.

So many expressions on Gabriel's face, he watched them flicker from one to another . . . astonishment . . . fear . . . quiet shock . . . curiosity . . . and then guilt? The older man dropped his head back down to his arms and started mumbling to himself . . .

"This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening," over and over again. Nny stared down at the papers in his lap, one leg was brought up to rest on the edge of the desk. "Good God let this be a dream." He looked up again, his hands still in his hair.

"So you are real." He kicked the desk again, eyes staring unblinking into the Good Doctor's. Gabriel jumped again and straightened his frumpy collared shirt. The man was haggard, his hair unwashed and his eyes droopy from sleep or lack thereof.

"You probably won't wish I was when I'm done here, I'll get straight to the-"

"I already don't." he interrupted, "Wish you were real, I mean." Johnny grew still, almost statuesque. To Gabriel he looked like a menace one second away from destroying everything. His expression was offended, murderously so, as if Dr. Manning didn't understand the severity of the situation he was in. The room was still dark behind the apparition in front of him . . . it was still dark around him as well, the glow from his desk lamp only barely touching the skin of the man's face and the white of his eyes.

When Gabriel didn't interrupt further, Johnny continued.

"I found this," He tossed the file at Dr. Manning and it skid across his desk to come to a rest between his arms. Gabriel pulled himself away as if burned, "At that fucking Happy Trails, or Happy Days Care Center place." The red finger prints stood out like waving flags and the doctor looked visibly nauseated.

"What have you done?"

"I read everything in that, looked at every picture, and listed over the reports . . . broken bones? Internal bleeding? That irrational Maze-bullshit treatment and you with your happy pill-passing hands . . . what the fuck were you thinking?" He didn't answer, instead he flipped it open and stared down jaded at the Polaroid of Todd's first admittance to overnight treatment. He traced Todd's name tag and then a bloody fingerprint on the corner of the picture.

He was talking again but Gabriel couldn't hear him, he could only look at that face, could only ask himself how things could have turned out this way. The Good Doctor had always wondered what had happened to little Todd Casil. He looked up and realized that he might have made a grave mistake in ignoring him.

"I read an article awhile back, on the internet." He explained quietly, "They said they never found him and I assumed he was dead. I think everyone did . . ." he laughed, "and then-!" he gestured to Johnny wildly, his laughter bubbling out almost hysterically. His head eventually dropped down to his desk, so he did not see when his late night guest stood.

"_I'm_ going to assume you don't have an explanation for your actions. You fucking doctors, thinking everything that's messed up about a person can be treated with cold rooms and medication." Gabriel's laughter died down but he did not look up, "You have no idea just how much worse you make things, just how horrible your actions are. He's just a kid you dumb prick!" the shaking shoulders stilled and very slowly, as Nny continued he raised his head to stare in awe at the ranting man. "One of the few good people in my life and I have to find out that he was treated like a lab rat for some pompous jackass and pumped full of chemicals because you dipshits can't even see what's right in front of you." There was a knife, coming almost out of nowhere and as his arms moved the blade swung to and fro in an almost hypnotic motion. "You could have taken him away from the fucking problem, put him with a family that would have taken care of him, would have noticed if something was _really_ wrong. He wasn't crazy and you had to go and make his life a living hell! His mother pops more pills than she actually eats food." Nny was leaning over the desk, "His father tells him that he was never wanted, that he can't wait for his son to get kidnapped. He almost was because of their neglect, if I hadn't been there . . ." A dangerous silence followed for several moments.

"What happened?"

"What should have happened a long time ago. I did what any one of you could have done from the start . . . I protected him. Who else is going to? You? Herring? His drug addicted mother? His father?" The knife scraped the table, leaving a long pale mark as he reached for the Polaroid. "Instead this is what you did." He held up the picture, putting it close to Gabriel's face. The man's eyes only briefly glanced at it. "I don't know how he survived in the care of any of you people."

"Neither do I." Awe, fascination, curiosity . . .

Johnny threw the picture in disgust and it hit the man's chest but this time he didn't flinch, only stared as if coming to a very important realization.

"You know," He started, very carefully, "I really only gave him drugs to help improve our therapy sessions. The only reason the medication was so strong is because he had a very severe case of PTS syndrome that was pushing his paranoia towards a debilitating case of Paranoid Personality Disorder. He couldn't sleep for weeks on end and that was causing his epileptic seizures." He idly toyed with the folder on his desk as he spoke, "Chronic insomnia doesn't usually do that but it was the only explanation I could find for the hallucinations. He didn't have any tumors or brain malformations." He stood and Nny tensed, his grip on the knife his knuckles white. "I gave him this bear, told him that it would be his friend when I couldn't be."

"Shmee?"

"Yeah, that's what he named it" he smiled fondly, "It helped him. I did what I could and he always had the option to not take the medication. I said it was up to him and that if he didn't want to take them he didn't have to. He trusted me for a little while."

_I want you to know you can rely him. He will always let you know what is real._

"It was just a bear until he stopped taking the meds, and then he started have whole conversations with it. He said that it would tell him things, horrible things . . . would tell him to hurt other people. I gave him a funnel to outlet a flood." That frenzied smile on the doctor's face again, "He wasn't getting any better, I didn't know how to help him, I didn't know what else to do. I considered having him transferred to a friend of mine who specializes in extreme cases of emotional trauma but then Herring stepped in. Said he wanted Todd's case, said he had a new treatment that might help him. Sank he claws into him and . . ."

He trailed off and Nny was only half listening.

"I never thought he'd get hurt, but he said he was glad to be off the Thioridazine, said it made him see things he didn't want to see. Made everything really bright . . . made everything too quiet. I thought if there was another way." He shrugged, fear slipping into place as Johnny slowly rounded the table.

"Excuses . . ."

"I didn't mean for it-!"

"Excuses . . ." The desk was still between them. The air was still and the knife was drawing a funny half loop on the table.

"Don't you realize-?"

"Excuses . . . excuses . . . excuses . . ." He was too close, Nny took a lazy swing and Dr. Manning collided with the patient chair. He scrambled to get back up. "I don't think _you_ realize what I'm here to do exactly." He made a leap for the door and collided with it, his hands scratching for the handle. "This is about what's fair."

"_Sometimes, Todd, reality is scarier than our darkest dreams, than our most horrible nightmares . . ."_

Something that should have made sense to Nny didn't quite connect. Something . . .

A shadow in his brain, covering an obvious truth, covering the light socket, covering that one thing that would illuminate his own answers . . .

The door was slammed open and the Good Doctor was down the hall, making a run for the front door. He didn't look behind him, didn't wait for the familiar intruder to follow.

An Obvious Truth . . .

_You are my wonderful nightmare . . ._

Someone strong, independent . . .

. . . innocent . . . good . . .

Powerful

. . . genuine . . .

My greatest hope,

. . . i want to be like you . . .

But don't you understand? I wish I could be more like _you_.

. . .

It's too late for me

. . . too late . . .

. . ._ my awful dream . . ._

He never reached it.

_Nightmares, what if they were literal metaphors for ourselves, for our true desires? Like honest lies, what if they could, with their contradictions name us for what we are? The sight of a door leading off into an abyss, follow the little white . . . little red . . . letters written on the skin of a monster looking tame._

This monster worming in your heart is your past self through and through

_Within a dream's nonsense is an obvious truth, a line of order and structure that calls to you and that means something . . ._

He's swallowing our lives and giving everything to you

_Something real, something that has been eating away at your soul . . ._

He feeds your anger, odium, brings terror that you take

_Your subconscious is communicating with your most superficial self when you dream . . ._

These dreams you have, his memories, are the reason you're awake

_If you don't dream, you lose contact with that primary being, that initial piece of yourself . . ._

He could see outside, see the approaching sun, see the oncoming day even as something sank into the skin of his back. The cracking of bones and pain racing so quickly along his nerves that they were burning his insides, his body on fire and Gabriel might have screamed. There was a window and the sky was slowly growing bright. People would be waking up soon. Warm bile slowly rose up his throat and filled his mouth as he felt the weight of a body on the back of his legs. A hard hand kept his head to the ground as he was viciously ripped open along the length of his spine. Metal on his tongue and that beautiful sky in his eyes.

Look at the picture.

Look at the words.

Really look and remember that it's you.

'I am so sorry, for everything. And you're right about it all.

Look at what we did to you, Todd.'

Another and another, so angry, so feeling. Stab once, twice, three times.

'Our own personal nightmare and so much worse because it's real and hurt and so very alone . . .'

Talking, he was talking but there was a fog around Dr. Manning's head that kept him from properly hearing what he said. More and more and the words were so fuzzy, he could barely feel it . . . he could barely see that warming sky, everything was going to that place where slipping into sleep helped you to escape the horror of reality forever.

They had blinded Todd to what was right in front of his face. Drifting in and out of what was real.

Look at the picture and see, turn on the light . . .

-

"Ahhhh-hah." _Shinnnnk_

"Ignorant piece of shit." His hand went up and came back down, his weapon slicing the skin along the doctor's back. His knee was pressed at the base of his spine, keeping him in place despite his flailing limbs. Johnny watched as the man's fingernails scratched at the floorboards, splintering, cracking as he was sliced open in neat little ribbons that he slowly pulled off.

"Ahh-ha huh . . . ugh . . . Tt-ttodd . . . y you're . . . hah heh . . .heh." Laughter, gurgling and panic stricken giggles was erupting from the man's mouth. Johnny had heard enough babbling from him. He slid the knife along the floor and hooked it under the man's throat, pulling it back up. Gabriel let out a gasping, choking breath that ended in a splatter of black blood on the floor beneath him. The motions of Nny's hands were surprisingly gentle, rocking back and forth even as the Good Doctor's own bloody fingers reached back to roughly grab his wrists. His upper torso was lifted up by the strength in his killer's arms and the fact that the manic man had hit the obstruction that was his spinal cord while slitting his throat.

Eventually the grip on Johnny's wrists loosened and he pulled the knife loose, tracing a half grin in his neck as Dr. Manning's head flopped to the floor with a dull thud. Still and silent was the once talkative body beneath him. Heavy . . .

Where there had once been a blissfully empty space inside of him now was filled with a heavy acid, one that was eating at his insides like chemical cleaner devouring waste.

Purged, he needed to be purged.

_Gargling yellow vomit as she bucked and tried to scream for help. Tied down and forced to purging her body of everything. Putrid stench in the air as a lifetime of medication was heaved out. She was purged, clean but lifeless and drained . . . staring up at the ceiling with china doll glass eyes that shined from tears and death. _

'_Todd!' she screamed with her paralyzed features._

_Rocking . . . like a boat at sea . . . cross the rift to the other side . . . . her face an empty hole-seeping her insides out like slop._

_Reaching, grabbing, and choking with vengeful hands . . . _

He needed to go back.

-

More to come.

Please review, I usually wait for about five before updating.

And a big thank you to the people who have reviewed, watched and faved this story. You guys are the ones who keep it going~!


	10. I am the Third

"You just know this kid is gonna have problems."

JV

Spiderfly

Chapter 10

It was dark again by the time he reached his house, the day had passed in a myriad of red and orange hues across the sky, leaking into the passenger seat of his car. He was careful this time to check his fuel gages and gas up right before hitting that endless highway. He passed cop cars and a police investigation. They paid him no mind as he drove by, mindlessly waving him through as if they weren't searching for someone who looked anything like him.

When he pulled up it must have been near midnight, all of the houses on his street were dark but he knew instinctively that not everyone was asleep. It felt like he'd been gone for so long. He looked up at his friend's window, the weight of his new found knowledge hanging off of his skin like the hooks of the deceased . . . dead weight bodies dragging him down . . .

The whole night around him was silent. They'd talk in the morning maybe . . .

_**Back so soon?**_

And it started all over again, clear as day . . . in his mind he was a prisoner.

No one had tried to break in, they wouldn't have needed to. He never locked up. An unfamiliar smell greeted him, a stale air that seemed to be exhaled from the open door that lead down to his basements. Wearily his bags were dropped to the ground and he walked over to close it, effectively blocking that droning moan the starving house gave him. It had been empty the entire time.

_**Did you find the answers you were looking for?**_

"Not what I was looking for, no. But I did find something for Squee."

_**Who?**_

"That kid that lives next door."

-

_. . . transference . . ._

-

_**Hmm . . .**_

He pulled out the photograph . . . so old . . . and fingered the place where the nametag was. My name is . . .

He just couldn't understand how something like that couldn't ruin Squee for the rest of his life. How something like that didn't seem to affect that genuine nature at all. It was almost as if it didn't happen.

He heard somewhere that when traumatic events take place like that, after some time the brain will block the memories out to help the person survive the experience . . .

"They did horrible things, cruel things." He was slightly aware that Reverend had started laughing. It echoed at the back of his mind, lingering and stretching out to form a maze inside of him along with all of the other noises he heard. Speaking but not making sense yet, those eyes, that face, like déjà vu.

"He didn't deserve it."

_**I'm sure he didn't**_

Giggling now and anger boiled in his gut. The photograph dropped to the floor and he took a step towards the doll.

THUMP

CREAK

Everything froze, he turned to face the door that lead downstairs. Old, rotten floorboards groaned a level down and he could only think of one thing.

"Squee?"

_**There is no one here but us. I can assure you that those noises are just the house making a fuss.**_

But he knew somehow that his friend was down there. Through that door, he knew . . .

"Something's not right. I'm supposed to say something. I'm not saying the right words."

"_He's still here." _Like the de-saturated edges of that photograph he heard his own voice using words in a way he couldn't remember, talking, speaking things he had never said. Foggy . . .

Everything went grey, the house was cleaner, the walls free of blood and scratch marks. But he was there, standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up. He was hearing a voice that was comforting for a brief moment and then horrible as the tone of it finally settled in. _Johnny sounded so angry._

_**Scared**_

"What?"

_**I asked you if you were scared. I can see your desensitization didn't go very well.**_

"I am not afraid."

Confused

Alone

Fear . . . standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up. Squee was there.

He slammed the door open, looked down and saw no one. More groaning floorboards in the distance, traveling deeper into the house. Running down the hallway now, running, racing, there, up ahead . . .

"Squee!" He called out with no response. The house creaked around him, throwing him off. So many things could happen to him . . . so many bad things in this place.

There was no sign of him. The hallway stretched out all around him, doors of stale bodies and white bones because it had been so long since he'd left and it made his head spin that unfamiliar smell of empty rooms filled with buzzing flies trapped like bugs in a jar . . .

Screaming, crying, calling out to no one, and then Todd's voice . . . THERE!

He stopped turning, one of the doors was breathing, gently. Something had slammed into him and made him see. For a brief moment, they had been one.

Air was being sucked in under the door, drifts of dust sinking in. Help me. Help me.

His hand reached out and pushed. The creaking hinges were like sirens in the quiet around him. Silence then a low groan of the center of the house sucking in air through the entrance of the tunnel that led to the basement next door. A lamp was swinging gently in that pull of air, yellow like the street lamps outside of the entrance to hell. There was a leather bound hilt in his hand and he wasn't sure when he'd grabbed one of his favorite knives.

His feet skimmed the edge of the gaping mouth in the middle of the floor. The light didn't touch the bottom. He wasn't sure how long he stood there scuffing the floor with the metal tipped toe of his shoe. A scream echoing from inside of that rabbit hole startled him. He looked for a moment in disbelief.

His knife traced a line in the dirt floor as he disappeared inside.

--

"_There is a point in every story_

_When the world falls into disarray_

_Nothing is as it seems and everybody lies_

_Even us to ourselves_

_This __i__s__ and always will be__ an infallible truth_

_And with this truth we set the foundations_

_For our own personal records and accounts_

_Of this damned and ill-fated destiny"_

_From the personal journal of Leslie Jacobs_

_Patient Number 5233_

_Happy Times Correctional Institution_

--

He couldn't remember the tunnel being this empty. He knew this place, this passageway beneath Squee's basement. He was sure he'd put bodies down here.

Slowly his hands pressed against the wooden planks above him. They lifted with a rasp and his scruffy, fingerless gloves could be seen followed by his almost hairless head. The smell wasn't something he remembered either. Squee's house had never smelled this . . . this . . . empty.

The screaming had stopped.

"Squee" he called out, but no answer came. Quiet echoed around him, swallowing every loud and creaking step he made. There was a light shining in from the door at the top of the stairs. Slowly, cautiously he climbed each step, hearing common household noises like running water and chairs scraping the floor the closer he got to the ground floor. He grabbed the doorknob and carefully leaned on the door in a way he knew from experience would keep it from creaking when he opened it.

Just as he started pulling there was a loud clatter like the sound of pots and pans dropping in a rush. He froze for a moment in surprise before yanking it open and scrambling across the small storage closet for the door that lead to the hallway near the kitchen. Just as he grabbed it he heard running steps wiz by the closet door and race up the stairs that lead to Squee's room.

Several doors around the house slammed shut before he could properly open the stuck cupboard door. It screeched loudly and looking around from his position in the hallway he saw nothing and no one. The kitchen and living room were empty. In fact nothing that he could see was out of place. No dishes on the floor, no pots or pans that could have made a clatter were out. As his ears adjusted he could hear the quiet tapping of keys coming from Mr. Casil's study, he could hear the creaking of bedsprings as Mrs. Casil turned over in her sleep in the parent's bedroom.

The groaning of floorboards above him and he slowly looked up. The clicking keys stopped and a strangely monstrous whining sound erupted from the office room. As he backed into the living room he noticed that something yellow and thick was bubbling out from under the door to Squee's parents' room. The whining sound turned into a vicious screech.

"SHUT UP!" Squee's tiny voice yelled from upstairs. Suddenly he was racing towards the little boy's words as fast as he could, his knee caught the banister and his arm banged into the wall but he didn't stop. The door to his friend's room thumped open as he crashed into it.

He looked around, he was sure he'd heard him shout from here but the room was empty save for Shmee who was in the center of the floor as if tossed there carelessly.

"_It was just a bear . . ."_

He sat next to Shmee on the floor, kneeling so close that he could count the stitches in the little trauma sponge's fur. That wicked grin maliciously smirked at him, as if he was hiding the world's deepest and darkest secret.

"_. . . until he started having whole conversations with it . . . I gave him a funnel to outlet a flood."_

You cannot supersaturate any kind of physical thing. Supersaturate is a term that applies to abstract concepts, things like the mind and spirit.

He reached for Shmee but before he could touch it, Squee's slight hand reached out and gently pulled it away. The little boy stepped around him and sat on the floor with his back pressed against the bed, cradling his bear in his lap.

"Oh Shmee, something terrible happened today." And then, suddenly Squee wasn't so little anymore. The manic man had barely blinked and his neighbor seemed to jump ahead in years. Scruffy black hair, all skinny limbs and garage sale worn clothes, fifteen year old Todd Casil pulled Shmee from his lap and hugged him to his chest. "Some of the kids at school wanted to pull a prank on me, they grabbed me before class and locked me in a storage closet."

_Several weeks into the following school year something awful happened to Squee. Something he didn't confess to anyone for weeks._

"I don't know why I was so scared, I don't know why it felt so horrifying. They just kept laughing out there, ringing in my ears so loud. They banged on the door and called me names. I panicked." Squee buried his face in Shmee and sobbed, "I couldn't help it. I just kept seeing things that scared me."

_. . . dark . . . so dark . . . bumping into things and breaking bones . . . so cold . . ._

I am the THIRD

A Master

He wanted to help but he knew instinctively that if he reached out he would ruin it even more. Everything he touched turned to shit.

_Todd Casil stopped caring about the scary neighbor man._

-

_. . . reversion . . . _

-

Numb, painless, he stared down at the bear in his hands and wondered how it got there. The comforter against him felt thin and worn, the bed's wooden bed frame digging into the small of his back. One of Shmee's stitches was popping out. Todd was gone, he distantly realized as the edges of his vision grew fuzzy from lack of sleep. His fingers started instinctively pulling at loose threads.

A sentinel of awakeness

I hold truth like a torch

The bear was silent as he started digging through the stuffing . . . his finger scraping something small and hard. It woke him up a little, pulling out that tiny white pill. And then that tan one, and then the handful of little brown, white, and reddish orange pills. The colored ones had a hard coating of colored sugar, to distinguish them from the others. Numbers he couldn't read were carved into the surface but his eyes were too blurry to distinguish them.

"_Hide them for me, Shmee."_

Some of them dropped like stones, hitting the floor in a sequence of taps, some pouring out of the bear's side like rice. When he forced his eyes open again he knew something was wrong. There was an awful taste in his mouth and Shmee was grinning, grinning and silent and silent . . . and dirty . . . and old . . . and torn open with stuffing falling out.

Between his legs were a pile of them, of his medicine, strewn all over the floor.

"_You can trust him . . . he'll always let you know what is real."_

His, it was his. Dust thick, all around him, sharp contrast, the light coming in through the broken window was blinding.

Shadows flicker before me

Grit on his tongue of thioridazine melting into his brain and body and soul being ripped out piece by piece and reorganized thoughts with razor sharp edges slicing ties that bind us to the ones we love and hate the way it feels to be stretched and pulled like toffee flavored poison that is painted like glue on flypaper to catch mutated and disfigured senses for us to endure . . . over and over again, again . . . that moment always in my eyes . . . etched in there over and over . . . again, again . . .

Rapid eye follow the chain of thought

Until the silence ends

--

"_Every time you touch me I'll do something bad to you." _

_Heart breaking and sweet, sweet agony. Love me, cherish me . . . hate me, damage me . . . just don't pretend I'm not here._

"_Mommy's ignoring you sweetie"_

_Don't pretend I don't exist, or I'll make your life hell._

"_I wish you'd never been born."_

_And whatever you do to me_

"_I hate you."_

_However you hurt me_

"_Disgusting excuse for a child. You're not my son." _

_Don't act like I'm nothing_

"_Little monster."_

_Because I'm not going anywhere._

_Rushing . . . rushing . . . . . ._

_Running through the house, had to make it down to the tunnel, had to get away, too bright, too clear. His brain was caught between himself and a brick wall. The medicine was slamming him into it, trying to break through cement lined with smoke and shadows, trying to get to that light switch, trying to make everything clear again. Slam! Slam! Slam! Suddenly everything splintered like glass and finally those buzzing bugs flew out of the jar and swarmed at the top of his skull. They were fireflies and they were illuminating everything. Pieces flew into place. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK-!_

_He leaned against something, he wasn't sure what and slowly sank down to his knees. Everything was whirling in a whoosh of airless wind inside and one sound rang clear through the mess in his ears._

"_You're awake." HIS voice. Todd's, coming from that room. "Nice glimpse of reality, isn't it?"_

"Squee?"_ He called out again, needing to see him. He needed to see that the dreams, that what his mind and memories told him weren't true. "Are you in there?"_

"_As eloquent as ever I see." Choking, hurting, dying. "It fits you."He walked closer, drowsy but awake, so painfully awake. His head aching but also clearer than he could ever remember it being. There was nothing outside of Squee, nothing outside of Todd Casil. His voice, no more buzzing, no more droning._

"I don't-!"

"_I'm glad it hurts."_

_He wearily pushed on the door and saw exactly what he knew he would, nothing. The bed was empty of his mother's body but the imprint she left behind was still there. Yellowing much long since dried, tinged pink from her blood._

"_Why did you leave me here?" behind him and when he turned a metal baseball bat slammed into his stomach, propelling him into the wall. His eyes saw a swatch of red in the grey before his head collided with the floor and he blacked out. He could see nothing but a void until eventually the thioridazine propelled him back into reality. "Don't ignore me!"_

_Shocks to his system. White and red behind his eyelids and when he opened them and sat up he was in the basement again._

This monster worming in your heart is your past self through and through

He's swallowing our lives and giving everything to you

"_Look at what you've become, Todd."_

And he was sitting in the same spot that his father had been right where that black scorch mark of old blood was. He looked up and stared at the grimy panes allowed very little light to shine through. He was . . .

"_I'm so sorry for everything. And you're right about it all. Look at what we did to you, Todd." Dr. Manning sitting beside his hospital bed the day before his mother would come to take him away forever. "People can't be trusted."_

"No."

"_You can't even trust yourself."_

He brings your anger, odium, brings terror that you take

These dreams you have, his memories are the reasons you're awake

"I'm not . . ."

He was rearranged, inside. Something didn't make sense and yet the drugs made everything mind numbingly evident. He was . . . he'd always been.

"I'm me. No one else but me."

We'll paint the street, the roof, and walls. Paint the ceiling so they know

Careful treading and soft footfalls for a spider this way goes

"_Good morning Johnny, how do you feel?" Todd waking up, seeing his mother's dilated eyes staring creepily at him from above his bed._

"_Mom, it's me. It's Todd. My name's not Johnny." She didn't seem to comprehend, didn't understand. In her confusion blind rage overtook everything. "What have you done with my son you disgusting little monster!" She struck him, once, twice until he stopped screaming, until he passed out. Until his father finally came in and dragged her away, leaving their son strewn across their bed._

He stared down at his hands as the memories made sense of everything and then jumbled him up all over again.

"_You weren't our first pregnancy."_

"_Johnny will protect you honey. That's what big brothers do."Todd didn't understand what his mother meant, so he went to his father for help._

"_Daddy, who's the Johnny, Mommy keeps talking about?"_

"_He died, stillborn. Your mother was heartbroken. And then you came and made everything worse. I wish your mother had decided to abort you, Todd. I really do."_

_Johnny_

_Johnny_

_JOHNNY_

Paint it RED for Letters written by the dead, paint it blue for all things gone

Let the child become the memory if he knew it all along

"I'm Johnny."

_Are you sure?_

"I'm Johnny, no one else." But the dust all around the room told a different story, the story of a little boy with a lot of problems. If you use a funnel to outlet a flood things get trapped inside. Pressure builds until . . .

POP

_Screaming choking yelling please Todd don't kill me we love you we promise no don't . . ._

_Nails crushing kneecaps_

"_Is that with a K, like in . . ."_

_Smile everyone_

"_It's so beautiful, looking down at it . . ."_

_Big smiles now_

"_I'm your BIGGEST FAN!"_

_No more talking, no more nonsense._

_Silence them . . ._

"_I have nothing to . . ."_

"_What are you-!"_

"_I don't understand."_

That those Letters never leave this place and your monster's here to stay

And the fly becomes the spider if he eats him whole today

"WHY DIDYOULEAVE ME HERE?"

"_No one's lived in that house for years."His father's voice, over and over again_

"WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME BEHIND?"

"_There is no 'scary neighbor man' Todd."Rational and yet he couldn't believe it was true. _

"Oh, God." But he'd met God hadn't he?

He realized that it was and wasn't Squee's voice that he could hear echoing off the walls of the basement. No one had lived in the Casil house for years, just as no one had lived in the house next door until he went there . . . after killing his . . .

"I think I'll hide him in a jar." Said the dead man to himself

"I think I'll put him in the dark or on my tallest shelf

"They were my," Throat dry and the dark stains on the floor taunted him. Everything was cold, December winds drifting in from hidden cracks in the walls and his brain so cold and hurting, "my parents."

No, not his head, something inside was waking up. A flash of red caught his eye. He crawled towards it.

"A spider cannot hurt me if I keep him in a box

Write on the top a warning and wrap in the tightest locks

When he touched it he noticed it was stiff with an ashy coating of grime but the material itself was soft and set in the brightest shade of red. A sharp little pebble bit into his thigh as he sat there and when he looked around the fluttering yellow police tape (_having long since been torn by curious neighborhood kids looking for the ghosts of the Casil family)_ was being sucked towards the secret trap door hidden behind empty boxes and debris. Waving like flags and pointing like fingers to say that there was nothing left for him there.

Cold cement wall behind him and a world of memories beating down . . . it was his once. He used to wear it to keep the chill away. Winter months were too much for the little red hoodie but the warmth it did provided him was enough to ease the ache.

"One day soon I'll take it out, sift through the dust and mites

By then I hope I'll be prepared for when my monster bites."

X

End

Some of you may have noticed that the last two installments, along with having poems written by me under the same title, also had theme song type things. The song for this one would be "Rain of Brass Petals (Three Voices Edit)".

LRL was "Letter From Lost Days" and NFM was "Never Forgive Me, Never Forget Me"

Thank you guys so much for the reviews, they really kept me encouraged to get this far even after having to put the story aside several times for IRL issues going on. Wonderful wonderful and here is a goodbye poem I've written just for you. I hope you had a happy Halloween~!

**Exit Left**

This is how it all began

Before my weary eyes could see

This is where they took my soul

Ripped it up and put it back in me

This is where my hands did bleed

Across a snowy ground of leaves

My digging nails found no value

No relief beneath the trees

This is what they said to me;

"My dear old friend I swear to thee

I'll fix your problems right and left

I'll end your suffering."

This is when I told a lie

Beneath a windswept, starry sky

"There is nothing wrong with me."

My lips part to deny

This is why I came to you

Because your words, they cut and chew

Slash through the mess they put inside

Take out and start anew.


	11. Dial Tone

A/N: I didn't want to post this here, I'm not sure why anymore but I think it has something to do with this insane belief that this might confuse people. I posted it forever ago in my scraps gallery on Devart but I have had time to think it over and I don't think I was giving you guys much credit. This makes me an idiot and I apologize. So, if you haven't crossed various pages around the internet and found this elsewhere here is the real epilogue for Spiderfly along with the Q&A's end segment. Thanks for joining me on this journey~!

X

Days had gone by. He knew because he'd been counting.

Johnny's eyes were glued to the shiny black plastic phone on the table across his living room. Ever thirty seconds or so he'd blink, shallow breaths barely moving his prostrate form on the floor. Next to him was Shmee, his insides splayed in dirty tuffs of almost white fluff that leaked onto the solar system pattern he'd made with Squee's medication. They were all there, all three hundred and twenty six pills, excluding the four or five he'd already consumed, he'd carried from the little boy's bedroom to his own home next door in a psychotic episode he hardly remembered. It happened sometimes if he was tired enough. He'd sleepwalk out of the house, wander around and wake up somewhere else.

Squee would call, Johnny had this . . . feeling.

Bits and pieces of his dream drifted in and out of focus. There had been stairs and of course monsters. Evil, selfish and greedy things that wanted to destroy him.

Dark outside again and the buzzing slowly filtered through his thoughts like a familiar and biting wind. Comfortable.

BRIIIIIINNNNNNGG~

His nails scratched at the floor and the now warm fabric in his hand. He wanted to put it on but he was afraid it would distract him from what he was supposed to be doing. He didn't want to miss little Squeegee's call.

BRIIIIIINNNNNNGG~

Reverend Meat was somewhere downstairs. Johnny was glad that the burger boy had made himself scarce, it made dealing with the headaches after sleeping easier.

BRIIIIIINNNNNNGG~

Nny blinked before forcing his cramped body to move as he scrambled to pick up the phone. It was cold in his hand and crackled white noise in his ear.

" . . . Hello?"

-

_"H-hello? Is this Jo-ohnny?" Static garbled the connection and Todd leaned back against the wall his bed was pressed into. His hands were starting to sweat a little. He waited for a moment, trying to listen through. "Johnny? Johnny is that you?"_

_". . .eegee?" His voice was punctuated with the crinkly sounds._

_"Yeah." He picked at the loose threads of his sweater, pulling and ripping the old red fabric until his fingers lost their grip and instead nervously gripped his bedspread. "I wasn't sure if I called that you'd pick up to be honest, Johnny."_

_"Wha- . . ." Todd floundered. Had he said something wrong?_

_"I said I didn't think you were home. It's so late." He stared at the window at the sky and all of the beautiful stars out. It didn't make him feel any better what with the incident at school and his mother's recent behavior._

_". . . okay?"_

_A sudden rush in his chest. He was always too emotional but then again he could feel a little something good since his neighbor was kind enough to ask after his wellbeing. "No, I'm not."_

_"What?"_

_"I said I'm not okay."_

_". . ." A pause sounded, it felt like forever before Todd decided to break it himself and get to the point._

_"I just needed to ask you something. I don't know what to do about what's been happening. Things keep coming up that make no sense and I can't handle it anymore. They won't stop no matter what I do, what I say and it doesn't make it any easier for either of us when dad says horrible shit to me and mom. I don't feel safe here anymore and they keep telling me these awful things." Todd was trying to talk through his sobs as his head pounded with that aching beeping noise that seemed to scream at him from everywhere. "He says it's because of what I did to them but I don't know what that is! What did I do?"_

_". . . what you think . . ?"_

_"I think I'm losing my mind."_

_". . .Don't . . . do it."_

_"What?"_

_"Don't let them control you." It came out clearer than he could have imagined it being. Almost as if Johnny was standing right next to him, talking in his ear. He looked over at the window, seeing no shadowy figure there._

_"Sometimes I want to hurt them, but they're my parents and I know it's awful for me to think bad things about them." He pulled at his hair, "They're supposed to take care of me, they're supposed to help and love me but I keep getting hurt and they don't give a shit. I never believed them when I was little. Parents don't normally want their kids to go missing, right?"_

_"Do . . . feel . . ." And in that moment he realized this was something he didn't have to turn to someone else for. The only person out of the two of them who could do what needed to be done was him. He couldn't dump this on Johnny._

_"Will you meet me at the park tomorrow night? Please, I think I know what I need to do." This time the pause was very brief._

_"Yes."_

-

Nny kept the handset held to his ear, not really noticing the dial tone underneath the sounds of his dead house groaning and of Reverend Meat demanding to be removed from the toilet. His eyes stared at the small orange Pluto in the solar system he'd made earlier, glinting up at him from his floor with a brutal honesty he didn't have the mental capacity to face.

Yes, it was very much a bitter candy he'd quickly learned not to eat.

X

End Epilogue

This is for all those who reviewed.

And for those who wanted to know what happened to Leslie, considering that Johnny jammed the exit door so that it didn't lock I'm sure you can guess what happens next.

Q: Does she escape?

A: Yes, yes she does. -.-

Q: Does she track Nny down and end up living with him? Becoming his second in command and killing . . . (ramble)

A: Uh, no. He lives several towns away and he stole his own file. How would she find him? She doesn't even know his name and Gabriel is dead so he can't tell her. Besides, she is obviously aware of his 'hobby' as she couldn't 'risk it' and ran away when she saw him. How lucky is she that for her the exit will be open and she can run away and live on as another severely messed up person in the world. I'm pretty sure she'd make a pit stop at Dr. Herring's apartment, funded by the tears of many broken children, for a goodbye on her way out of that shitty city.

Q: Is this the real end this time? Cause it's said "complete" since you last updated and I don't want to wait for another chapter if this is the actual end (ramble) . . .

A: Actually the last chapter was the end. This one is more of a whim and sort of calls to the original ending I had planned. For those who haven't caught on yet the dial tone was happening the entire time for both of them. They weren't really talking to each other. That would be impossible.

Q: WTF?!

A: He's crazy . . . I mean he talks to walls and dolls and other inanimate objects so it's not so strange he'd talk to a phone because he thinks someone's there on the other line.

Q: But the phone rang!

A: Again, **crazy** . . . and besides, dolls talk back to him all the time so him imagining that his phone rang isn't so strange considering he wanted so bad for it to happen.

Q:!?!

A: The second part (in _italics_) happens in the past. In LRL to be precise. Little Red Letter is the first installment to this Trilogy. I always recommend reading in chronological order. LRL, NFM, and Spiderfly. Complicated? Probably more than I intended it to be but that's how it works. I mess up things enough as it is so reading in order is a must.

Q: Should I be this confused?

A: The confusion is for the _most_ part on purpose. It clues you into how Johnny feels because despite all of his efforts he could never make himself any less human than he already is. He's at the brink already.

A: Did Johnny really take five of those pills? Isn't that dangerous?

Q: He took 4-5 pills of the child's dosage of Thiordazine which to an adult with his kind of disorder would be below the recommended dosage.

Q: **What music did you listen to when writing this?**

A: Random soundtrack music, random noise-type music. I try to avoid lyrical the best I can but it happens. I could put together a zip file for each story if you review to say you'd want that. Either log in or leave an email address I can reply to so I can send you the links. Make sure I can read it. The following format often works best.

Name (at) website (dot) com

Happy Trails to you~!


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